Tuesday, May 7, 2024
Year : 2, Issue : 19
The organization behind an international network of anti-abortion facilities is misleading people with claims that abortions can be “reversed”, a lawsuit filed on Monday by Letitia James, the New York attorney general, alleges.
The organization, Heartbeat International, is affiliated with more than 2,000 facilities that aim to convince people to continue their pregnancies. In recent years, many such centers, which are often Christian and sometimes known as crisis pregnancy centers, have started to promote a controversial practice known as “abortion pill reversal”, which claims that people can halt a medication abortion midway through.
The first randomized, controlled clinical study to attempt to study this “reversal” protocol’s effectiveness came to an abrupt stop in 2019, after three participants landed in the hospital hemorrhaging blood.
James’s lawsuit accuses Heartbeat International and a slew of New York-based crisis pregnancy centers of making claims about abortion pill reversal that violate New York laws against deceptive business practices, false advertising and fraud. The lawsuit calls for the defendants to pay thousands of dollars in civil penalties.
Heartbeat International did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Crisis pregnancy centers’ promotion of abortion pill reversal works in tandem with their demonization of medication abortion, according to James’ lawsuit. Medication abortion, which is typically induced using doses of two different drugs, now accounts for more than 60% of US abortions and has become a prime target of anti-abortion activists since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade two years ago.
Dr George Delgado, who helped develop the abortion pill reversal protocol, is now one of the doctors challenging the availability of mifepristone in a US supreme court case. The justices are expected to issue an opinion on that case in June.
More than 100 studies have found that it is safe to use mifepristone to end a pregnancy.
Source: The Guardian
