Pro-abortion advocates refuse to enact commonsense safeguards on dangerous chemical abortion drugs to protect women from serious adverse events, or worse, abortion-related coercion and abuse.
This refusal to enforce commonsense safeguards and protect women is shocking when compared with pro-abortion advocates’ aggressive attacks on Abortion Pill Reversal (APR). For years, pro-abortion activists have smeared APR and sought to prevent women from using it. They have even stooped to lawfare to prevent it from being used to reverse abortions in instances where women may regret their choice.
A lawsuit against APR in California, however, is slowly making the anti-APR narrative crumble. Filed by pro-abortion California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the lawsuit accused pro-life organisations of spreading misinformation about APR, which the attorney general implies is essentially junk science. Yet California’s lead expert and abortionist, Dr Mitchell Creinin, admitted in sworn testimony that he “could not say APR is unsafe or ineffective”.
He cannot say it because it is not. APR has successfully helped more than 8,000 women reverse abortions. It is essential in a world where more than 60 per cent of women report feeling coerced into unwanted abortions, and 70 per cent of women say their abortions contradicted their personal values or preferences.
It is a shockingly simple process to counteract the effects of the two-drug chemical abortion regimen. Women take the first drug in the regimen, mifepristone, which essentially starves their unborn baby of nutrients, leading to the baby’s death. About a day or two later, the second drug in the regimen, misoprostol, induces contractions that help the woman expel the contents of her uterus.
In the many cases where women ultimately regret taking the first chemical abortion pill, APR offers them a safe and effective way to reverse mifepristone’s effects if they have not yet taken the misoprostol pill. The process involves taking extra progesterone to counteract the mifepristone. Women are typically required to continue taking low doses of progesterone until delivery to ensure there are no mifepristone-related complications moving forward.
According to CatholicVote’s media organisation, Zeale, Dr Mitchell Creinin’s research on APR, on which the state’s lawsuit relied, was itself deeply flawed. Zeale reported that the Thomas More Society found that “emails presented during trial showed Creinin’s private characterisation of the study differed from how he later described it in the published research. After researchers warned they could not produce a matching placebo, Creinin privately described the study as ‘pseudo-blinded.’ He nevertheless later published it as a double-blind study and defended that characterisation during trial.”
If true, Dr Creinin’s alleged mischaracterisation should give Americans pause for two reasons. First, it would be shocking if a medical professional entrusted to uphold the Hippocratic Oath to “Do No Harm” intentionally misled patients about the results of a clinical study. Second, it is disturbing, though perhaps unsurprising to the article’s author, that a pro-abortion advocate would do anything possible to protect abortion access at all costs – even if that meant preventing women from accessing the means to safely reverse unwanted abortions should they choose to. That women might want to reverse an abortion at all undermines what critics describe as the abortion industry’s narrative of empowerment – which is perhaps why many, including Dr Creinin, are said to be determined to prevent APR from becoming more mainstream.
It is telling that pro-abortion activists such as California Attorney General Bonta are determined to ruthlessly target pro-life advocates for using APR, or for quietly serving women through pregnancy resource centres.
Even more ironic – and disturbing – is that those allegedly “championing” women and choice are completely ignoring the growing trend of abortion-related coercion and abuse that is victimising women around the world, all because pro-abortion advocates refuse to bow to common sense and reinstate basic safeguards on dangerous chemical abortion drugs.
