Fifty Kansas Republican men, and ten Republican women this week signed off on a piece of legislation that requires doctors to tell patients of medically induced abortions that they have 24 hours to reverse the procedure.
The idea of reversing a drug induced abortion has been put forward by anti-choice groups for some time, and last year, in a study, they tried to prove it was possible, but as Slate pointed out, the studies quickly started to run into problems — until it was withdrawn.
Abortion-pill “reversal” was the brainchild of George Delgado, a San Diego OB-GYN who heads a family-medicine clinic with a separate “crisis pregnancy center.” The “abortion-pill reversal” he promotes is an intervention after a woman has taken the first of two medications that constitute a medication abortion: mifepristone and misoprostol. Those medications are usually taken a day or two apart, and a small number of women experience regret after taking the first course of medication. Delgado’s approach is to deliver a large dose of progesterone, the “pregnancy hormone,” as soon as possible—an attempt to overwhelm the mifepristone and preserve the pregnancy. He has developed a hotline and a network of hundreds of doctors, mostly in the United States, who stand ready to administer the procedure. He calls the approach “a second chance at choice.”
Dr. Delgado contended that the paper was withdrawn for “small, technical” reasons, but in doing so, he also pointed out serious problems with the only study done:
The paper’s withdrawal from the journal may be temporary, but larger questions about Delgado’s work are looming. If USD’s review board did not approve of his research, then who did? Were Delgado and his co-authors conducting clinical research on an experimental treatment without oversight?
In other words: there simply isn’t any founded science that confirms the Republican idea, and quite a bit of skepticism, including thoughts that such treatment might result in unforseen harms, as it has not been properly tested, as Marie Claire notes:
It also "used inappropriate comparison groups, was too small to support scientific conclusions, and used data collection that was unverified, inappropriate, inaccurate, results-oriented, and without appropriate ethical safeguards necessary for human research," says Diane J. Horvath-Cosper, M.D., a reproductive health advocacy fellow at Physicians for Reproductive Health. "So-called abortion reversal has not been tested for safety, effectiveness, or the likelihood of side effects." Although progesterone is generally well tolerated, it can cause "significant cardiovascular, nervous system, and endocrine adverse reactions as well as other side effects," according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).
Still, the state legislature — which lacks degrees in medicine and obstetrics, plans to require medical advice be given, and potential treatments to be offered, without findings in science.
With 60 signers, the bill has nearly enough legislators to pass and go before the Governor; Kansas Republicans have indicated they would welcome the fight for a veto override.