Nearly a third of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers nationwide advertise unapproved medicine that reverses abortion pills, a study has found.
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, created an online database, “Choice Watch,” to analyze keywords from over 470,000 web pages across 1,825 pregnancy centers. Most offered services such as ultrasounds, pregnancy tests and financial support to encourage women to carry their pregnancies to term.
Published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, their analysis found that 30% also advertised abortion pill reversals for women who regretted terminating their pregnancies. The reversal medicine hasn’t been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
“To be clear, there is no approved abortion pill reversal treatment,” said John Ayers, a computational epidemiologist at UC San Diego and co-author of the study. “Imagine facing a life-altering potential regret only to be sold a magic solution that not only doesn’t work, but can cause serious harm. This is happening now.”
Mr. Ayers said the “so-called reversal treatments” could heighten the risk of incomplete expulsion of the fetus in chemical abortions, leading to sepsis and possibly death.
Heartbeat International, a network of over 3,600 crisis pregnancy centers in 90 countries, pushed back hard on the study in a statement to The Washington Times.
“The report appears to be trying to stoke fear in people concerning abortion pill reversal and shaming pregnancy help organizations for providing information on such a life-saving treatment,” said Andrea Trudden, Heartbeat International’s vice president of communications and marketing. “Safety and care are central to everything we do. Women who reach out to [Heartbeat’s partnering abortion pill reversal network] are connected to licensed medical professionals who provide informed consent and personalized care.”
The medical establishment has rejected research from pro-life organizations showing the effectiveness of the drug progesterone in reversing the effects of abortion pills, which have surged in popularity.
The FDA has approved progesterone as a treatment for miscarriages but not for reversing abortion pills.
Medication abortions, also known as chemical abortions, involve a two-drug regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol. The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute estimates that the FDA-approved regimen was used in 63% of abortions reported in the U.S. last year, up from 53% in 2020 and 24% in 2011 as fewer women received surgical abortions.
Pro-lifers have touted a 2018 study in Issues in Law & Medicine that found a 64% to 68% success rate in reversing the effects of mifepristone when patients followed it up with progesterone instead of misoprostol, without added side effects.
Pro-choice researchers objected that Dr. George Delgado, the study’s lead author and medical director of an abortion pill reversal advocacy group, failed to include a control group or placebo to confirm his claim that mifepristone rather than progesterone caused hemorrhaging in some patients.
“There’s little research available on abortion pill reversal outside of the pro-life movement because it’s pretty new,” said Mary Ziegler, a leading historian of the legal abortion debate and law professor at the University of California, Davis. “Outside of that movement, research has been halted, meaning abortion pill reversal isn’t much accepted.”
Ms. Ziegler noted that physicians at her university began studying the effects of abortion pill reversal in 2019, but terminated their research after test subjects complained of side effects and pro-choice advocates accused them of publicizing a risky treatment.
“Some of it is abortion politics and some of it is how incredibly risk-averse doctors are about not wanting to get sued or prosecuted,” Ms. Ziegler said. “There’s also just the reality that when the research is being done by people with a lot of emotional skin in the game, that makes it hard to trust.”
She said that because most abortion-related research is sponsored by the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute or the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, it becomes harder to separate politics from facts.
Michael New, a senior associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, said the UC San Diego study published this week falls into the left-wing advocacy category.
He pointed to his institute’s data showing that 2,750 pregnancy resource centers are in the U.S., far more than the 1,825 centers the study located online. That’s because many of the centers don’t have websites, he said.
“Analyzing websites may not be the most accurate way to calculate the fraction of pregnancy help centers offering various social services,” said Mr. New, a professor of social research at the Catholic University of America. “That is because some pregnancy help centers may not list all of their services on their website.”
He said Lozier recently counted parenting classes at 88% of pregnancy centers and post-abortion social support at 72% of them compared with the 62.1% and 39.1%, respectively, that the UC San Diego researchers counted in their keyword search of websites.
The study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that 90% of crisis pregnancy center websites advertised social services such as adoption (83%), parenting (62%), post-abortion social support (39%) and men’s social support (14%).
An additional 91% advertised medical services such as pregnancy tests (85%), ultrasounds (77%), sexually transmitted infection testing (54%), abortion education (52%) and abortion pill reversal referrals (30%).
According to pro-life activists, the study also highlights the pro-choice bias of the American Medical Association.
The AMA, which publishes JAMA Internal Medicine, joined a North Dakota abortion clinic in a 2019 lawsuit against the state’s requirement that doctors inform patients about abortion pill reversal options.
Dr. Patrice Harris, AMA president, accused the state of forcing doctors “to mislead and misinform their patients with messages that contradict reality and science.”
“JAMA’s ongoing opposition to ensuring women have access to support to help them avoid abortion is disheartening and inconsistent with Democratic values of supporting the vulnerable,” Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life, said Wednesday. “This study is not credible and should be ignored.”
Pro-life activists expressed confidence that future research would vindicate the safety and effectiveness of progesterone in reversing abortion pills.
“Progesterone administered by medical personnel is totally safe and has been used for over five decades for at-risk pregnancies,” said Brad Mattes, president of the Life Issues Institute. “Abortion pill reversal provides true choices to women.”
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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