A study of abortion pill reversal methods that was halted due to safety concerns only further proves the dangers of drug-induced abortions, pro-life advocates and obstetricians say.

Twelve women enrolled in a University of California, Davis, study took mifepristone, also known as Mifeprex, the first pill in a two-drug regimen to end the baby’s life and send the mother in labor. Researchers gave half of the women a placebo and the other half progesterone, a hormone that has been shown to reverse the effects of mifepristone, saving the unborn baby’s life.

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Three of the 12 women in the study experienced hemorrhaging and required ambulance transport to a hospital, according to study results published this month in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology. The study’s authors, who have ties to the abortion industry, intended to enroll 40 women, but they concluded it was too risky to proceed. The researchers blamed the women’s hemorrhaging on their failure to complete the two-step abortion process by taking misoprostol, a drug intended to induce labor.

But Donna Harrison, executive director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, called that conclusion “misleading” and “pure speculation.” She is still analyzing the report but said if anything it proves that mifepristone, not progesterone, puts women at greater risk of hemorrhaging.

Two of the three women who experienced heavy bleeding had taken mifepristone with a placebo. They had to have emergency surgical abortions and blood transfusions. The other woman, one of five who took mifepristone and progesterone, delivered her unviable baby without requiring surgery or a blood transfusion. The remaining four patients who took progesterone had viable pregnancies two weeks later.

“While this study represents a small number of women, it shows the high success rate of progesterone––80 percent––in reversing the effects of mifepristone,” Harrison said. “It also shows how extremely foolish and dangerous it is to take this drug without medical supervision.”

Drug-induced abortions accounted for 39 percent of all abortions in the United States in 2017, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. Supporters tout it as a safe and easy alternative to surgical abortion.

Harrison said that is far from the truth.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported 4,195 complications experienced by women who took mifepristone between 2000 and 2018, including 1,042 hospitalizations, 599 blood transfusions, 412 infections—including uterine lining infection, pelvic inflammatory disease, and sepsis—and 24 deaths. Additionally, 97 women who had ectopic pregnancies took the drug.

Pro-life groups are working to inform women of the risks as the abortion pill becomes more prevalent, especially on college campuses. California recently became the first state to require all public universities to offer abortion pills to students.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute started a website with statistics and personal accounts. “The mantra is pop a pill and it’s over,” one woman says in a video on the site. “No one counseled me or told me what the risks were.”

Meanwhile, the abortion pill reversal protocol has saved more than 900 babies, according to Heartbeat International. The method, developed by physicians George Delgado and Matthew Harrison in 2007, involves administering progesterone to a woman up to 72 hours after she has taken mifepristone. About 65 percent of women who followed the protocol were able to give birth to a baby without any apparent increased risk of birth defects, according to a study Delgado released last year.

(Excerpt from World. Article by Mary Jackson.)