“It’s not junk science, it’s new science.”
That's what San Diego doctor George Delgado—medical director at Culture of Life Family Health Care—says of his medically suspect claim that he has found a way to reverse the course of medical abortions.
Delgado says that by administering progesterone injections to six women who had taken mifepristone, he "reversed" their abortions in four instances between the years of 2007-2012. But the truth he ignores is that mifepristone often doesn't work on its own; it must be taken with a second drug, misoprostol. One abortion provider noted that abortions induced by mifepristone alone only have a success rate of around 60 percent. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) said that for women who take mifepristone alone, their pregnancy will likely continue in 30 to 50 percent of the cases.
Despite the lack of any actual evidence or scientific studies that suggest Delgado's method works, lawmakers in two states—Arizona and Arkansas—have passed legislation requiring women to be informed that they can reverse their abortions.
Kira Lerner reports on Delgado's skeptics:
David Grimes, the former chief of the abortion surveillance branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote in RH Reality Check in April that [Delgado's] report “makes numerous scientific errors.” The progesterone regimen recommended has not been formally studied or vetted, Grimes said, and the evidence does not prove that progresterone caused any abortions to be “reversed.”
“The fact that a pregnancy continued after this treatment in no way implies a causal association,” Grimes said, adding that by the 1980s, the success rate of an abortion with just mifepristone was recognized as too low for general use.
Grimes also claims that because no control or comparison group was used and because the sample size was so tiny, the study is effectively useless. A study in France, however, followed women given only mifepristone and came up with a similar pregnancy continuation rate to the one Delgado claims he achieved.
Delgado says he's working another study to substantiate his claims.