Many pregnant women regret taking the first step of the medical abortion pill process and wish they could save their baby.
The good news is they can. To date, 170 babies nationwide—including six in Georgia—have been born thanks to the “Abortion Pill Reversal” (APR) technique. Another two Georgia women –100 nationwide—are expected to deliver thanks to the program.
APR is operated by Culture of Life Family Services headquartered in San Diego, CA. Its hotline—1-877-558-1333—is staffed 24/7. Calls are answered by a nurse who counsels and can refer women to a participating physician or facility in their area.
One of the Georgia life-saving success stories is 23-year-old Sandra (not her real name).
While in law school she became pregnant by her medical school boyfriend. Both pro-abortion at the time, they decided their best option was to terminate the pregnancy.
Sandra went to an Atlanta area Planned Parenthood facility, where she “cried a lot,” and was prescribed the necessary medications for a medical (non-surgical) abortion. She took the first pill, RU-486, at the clinic and was given prescriptions for the second pill, as well as pain and anxiety medications.
But while at the pharmacy, she noticed a woman holding a baby. Sandra immediately knew the abortion pill she had taken an hour earlier was a tragic mistake.
“I thought: how could I ever have another child later in life if I decide that the baby I was carrying did not deserve to live,” Sandra said.
Returning home, she began searching the web for stories of women who had medical abortions. In the process, she found the APR website—abortionpillreversal.com.
APR referred her to a participating physician near her who immediately started the process of reversing the effects of RU-486.
“I realized that Planned Parenthood had lied when they said once you take the first pill of the two-step process there’s no going back,” Sandra explained. You can, and our healthy and happy one-year old daughter is living proof.
She also had harsh words for Planned Parenthood’s overall operation. “They are not there to help women; they’re in business to make money.”
“I think back on it now and I can’t believe that I made such a rash and impulsive decision. I realized that I was willing to kill my baby because I thought having her would be inconvenient,” Sandra explained.
She and her husband married during her pregnancy and the couple considers their daughter to be the “light of our lives.”
APR Director Sara Littlefield told GRTL that they have partnered with 11 medical providers and seven Pregnancy Resource Centers in the state to help women like Sandra. Hopefully those numbers will grow.
“We’re working to get our emergency APR kits to emergency rooms and urgent care clinics in Georgia,” Littlefield said.
And it needs to be treated as an emergency since it’s critical to start the process within 24 to 72 hours after taking the first abortion pill (RU-486) and before taking the second pill—misoprostol.
While proven effective in the majority of cases, the procedure does not always work.
The process involves administering several shots of progesterone, the pregnancy hormone, to neutralize mifepristone, the drug which blocks nourishment from reaching the child, causing its death.
Decatur OBGYN physician Kathleen Raviele said the program is even more important now that the FDA recently approved using RU-486 up to 70 days of gestation from the original 49 days.
“This will be very dangerous for women because it appears to be so easy that it will be used even more in crisis pregnancies,” Dr. Raviele said.
And the process is clearly dangerous. Medical abortions can result in: bleeding and hemorrhaging, infection, ectopic pregnancy, damage to the uterus, auto-immune disease, complications in future pregnancies, and Thrombotic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (TTP), a rare blood condition that causes clots to form in blood throughout the body,
It is estimated that nearly 25 percent of all abortions in the United States are done with RU-486 and the number is growing. That trend is evident in Georgia where the CDC reported 3,883 medical abortions in 2012, compared to 2,060 in 2010.
The numbers are undoubtedly higher since there are websites where women can obtain abortion pills without a doctor’s prescription or oversight.
Pro-life supporters can help spread the word about APR by asking their physicians if they are aware of the process and asking them to visit the website: abortionpillreversal.com.
Sources: abortionpillreversal.com; washingtontimes.com; yahoo.com; priestsforlife.org.
By Wayne DuBois
Media Relations Advisor