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July 23, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – A pro-life physician known for videos setting the record straight on numerous medical aspects of the abortion debate is back with a new video, this time pushing back against the narrative that abortion pill reversal is some sort of fringe, unproven “voodoo” medicine.

The abortion pill Mifepristone (better known as RU-486) works by blocking the natural hormone progesterone that developing babies require to survive. Abortion pill reversal consists of administering extra progesterone to counteract mifepristone’s effects, ideally within 24 hours of taking the abortion pill.

The technique’s pioneers credit it with helping more than 400 women save their babies since 2007. Overall, they say they have seen a 55% success rate, meaning that while reversing a chemical abortion is far from certain, it has the capacity to save many babies. Pro-abortion organizations such as NARAL and the American Medical Association have come out against it.

Dr. William Lile is a board-certified OB/GYN and pro-life public speaker who maintains the ProLifeDoc website. On Monday, he released the following video explaining how chemical abortions work, and how they can be reversed.

“RU-486 is given, and the body's sitting there going, ‘I thought we were pregnant but I don't see any more progesterone so we must not be pregnant. If we're not pregnant then there's no reason to support a pregnancy,’” Lile explains. “So can we reverse that effect? What if we were to give more progesterone? Well, we've done that. In fact, there's been hundreds of times where an abortion has been attempted with this medication RU-486 and then hormone progesterone is given to override that.”

Specifically, doctors “use a hormone called Prometrium, that is micronized progesterone,” he continues. Lile stresses that applying Prometrium to chemical abortion attempts is neither guesswork nor “some sort of a voodoo wild thing,” but instead is well-understood from the hormone’s common use in a variety of other situations, such as in vitro fertilization, treating women with a history of miscarriage, and preventing preterm labor.

“So Prometrium is not some sort of a wild medication that we're using to reverse an attempted abortion with RU-486,” he says. “It's something that we use in obstetrics and gynecology all the time. It's a routine medication.” Lile likens using it for abortion reversal to administering Narcan to a drug-overdose patient in an emergency room.  

“How long after RU-486 is given can we still be successful? Well, sooner is better than later,” Lile continues. “Day, two days, maybe three days, it's real important to try to initiate that early, and there's lots of protocols that we use, and we use the same medicine, the same doses to reverse the effects of RU-486, and we have been successful with that.”

Lile goes on to add that he has seen no evidence that using Prometrium to counteract RU-486 causes birth defects or “any kinds of problems” with babies. “You're either gonna be successful or you're not gonna be successful with this. It's not somewhere in the middle.”

“It's amazing science, and it's amazing that we can offer this kind of therapy for somebody who says ‘I made a bad decision and is there anything I can do to reverse it?’” Lile concludes, predicting that “you’re gonna see a lot more about that in the future, and its availability is gonna be much more widespread.”

Dr. Lile’s previous videos have touched on subjects such as abortion never being medically necessary. In January, he wrote an op-ed for LifeSiteNews advocating that children in the womb be recognized as patients, just like their mothers.