Anna Claire Vollers | Stateline.org (TNS)
Anti-abortion organizations are pushing state lawmakers to promote a controversial and unproven “abortion reversal” treatment — flouting the objections of medical professionals who point out it is not supported by science.
In the past several years, Republican lawmakers in at least 14 states have passed laws requiring health care providers to give patients information about abortion reversal. Kansas became the 15th state this year. Meanwhile, Democratic-controlled Colorado this year moved in the opposite direction, becoming the first state to effectively ban abortion reversal treatment, designating it as medical misconduct.
The treatment involves prescribing the hormone progesterone, used for decades to help prevent miscarriage, to stem the effects of mifepristone, one of the drugs used for medication abortions. Medication abortion already accounts for a growing majority of U.S. abortions, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in recent years has lifted restrictions on it, allowing more patients to get a prescription via telehealth and receive the pills in the mail.
Medication abortion involves a combination of two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, taken within one to two days of each other to terminate a pregnancy.
Proponents of abortion reversal say that a high dose of progesterone, taken within 72 hours of taking mifepristone and before the misoprostol pill, can “reverse” the effects of the mifepristone and stop the abortion process.
Abortion reversal supporters say that women who begin medication abortion and then immediately change their minds should have access to the treatment so they can try to save their pregnancies.
“Autonomy dictates that the patient ultimately decides the intended outcome of her pregnancy even if she’s already taken an abortion drug,” said Christa Brown, a registered nurse and the senior director of medical impact for Heartbeat International, a national…
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