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The Christian Right Is Helping Prescribe Unproven 'Abortion Reversal' Treatments

An investigation by openDemocracy found 12 countries where women were connected with doctors to prescribe the treatment, including the UK, Canada, Italy, and Spain.
Christian Right Helping Doctors Prescribe Unproven ‘Abortion Pill Reversal’ Treatments
A protester holds up a coat hanger at a protest for abortion rights in Poland. Photo by WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP via Getty Images

Doctors across the world are providing women with unproven and potentially dangerous “abortion pill reversal” (APR) treatments with support from the Christian right.

An investigation by website openDemocracy has found that medical professionals across Europe, Latin America, North America and Africa are supplying treatment in the form of pessaries containing the hormone progesterone as a way to “reverse” an abortion pill, despite there being no medical approval for the treatment in any those countries.

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According to openDemocracy, a hotline run by an ultra-conservative Christian right group is connecting patients to doctors in their country willing to work with the Christian groups, who then offer a prescription of progesterone over the phone or by email. 

Doctors would assure patients the treatment to reverse an abortion this way was safe or simply encourage them to go to A&E if there are any issues, despite there being no medical evidence for the use of progesterone in this way, openDemocracy says.

Undercover journalists discovered the global extent of the medically unproven APRs by contacting the 24/7 hotlines which provided them with info on how to obtain the prescriptions. If local doctors could not be reached, the hotline operators simply emailed over dosage instructions. 

The investigation found women being connected with doctors in the UK, Armenia, Canada, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Ukraine and Uruguay.

Although progesterone – a naturally occurring hormone – in itself is not unsafe, medical trials with APRs in the US have been halted over safety concerns. A US study into the use of progesterone for abortion reversal purposes was stopped after some participants experienced “severe bleeding.”

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According to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), anti-abortion protesters regularly hand out leaflets relating to APRs outside UK clinics. 

“Unfortunately, this is a tactic used by anti-abortion activists who harass women who attend our clinics for care,” Katherine O’Brien, associate director of communications and campaigns for BPAS told VICE World News. “Women in Merseyside and Birmingham have been subjected to this potentially dangerous misinformation already this year.”

“The fact that anti-abortion groups are encouraging women down this path demonstrates that they do not care about women,” she continued. “I am deeply concerned about the process by which this medication is being prescribed – is a UK doctor giving out clinically inaccurate information, and are they properly counselling women about the risks? If women do not receive accurate, impartial advice, they cannot consent to treatment, and this would then be a matter for the GMC [general medical council] to investigate.”

A spokesperson for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) said they were aware that the treatment was “associated with a high risk of serious bleeding and consequently dangerous for women, as well as ineffective.” 

“The GMC Good Practice guidelines state that when prescribing a medicine off-label, a doctor must be satisfied that there is sufficient evidence or experience of using the medicine to demonstrate its safety and efficacy,” they continued. “To our knowledge, the only randomised control trial had to be abandoned due to unsafe outcomes for participants [...] This investigation has highlighted the need for health regulators to consider whether it is lawful for non-medical organisations to advertise prescription medication."