(LifeSiteNews) — An abortionist testifying in an ongoing lawsuit against pro-life pregnancy centers struggled to give a clear answer when asked if he could swear under oath to the abortion industry’s insistence that abortion pill reversal (APR) is ineffective.
In 2023, California Democrat Attorney General Rob Bonta launched a lawsuit against Heartbeat International and RealOptions Obria Medical Clinics, the latter of which runs a chain of counseling centers in the northern part of California, accusing them of violating the state’s False Advertising Law and Unfair Competition Law and seeking an injunction blocking them from promoting APR.
The abortion pill mifepristone (RU-486) works by blocking the natural hormone progesterone that developing babies need to survive. APR consists of administering extra progesterone to counteract mifepristone’s effects, ideally within 24 hours of taking the abortion pill.
Live Action reports that among those Bonta called to build his case was abortionist Mitchell Creinin, author of a study funded by the leftist Society for Family Planning that the abortion lobby has claimed proves APR is unsafe. However, in his newly uncovered deposition, Creinin’s answers painted a far less convincing picture.
Over the course of being repeatedly asked if he could “swear under oath that APR does not work,” Creinin attempted to split hairs, insisting he could swear “that I have no evidence that it does work,” while apparently admitting “I cannot swear under oath” to the definitive statement that it does not. Repeated requests for a simple “yes or no” answer to the question went in vain.
He was even more noncommittal about claims that APR is unsafe, maintaining he had concerns about not following up mifepristone with misoprostol but admitting that he himself prescribes progesterone for off-label uses. “I offer it to patients and tell them the pros and cons, and it’s the patient who decides if she wants to use it,” he testified. “In the short term, it’s safe. In the long term, there is an association with thyroid cancer. So it’s up to them to decide if the… potential benefit outweighs the potential risk.”
Critically, at one point Creinin dismissed pro-APR doctors on the grounds that they are “bound to uphold science in the same way, and they demonstrate they don’t when they try to do statistical analyses on ten people or three people. That’s not science.” It was later pointed out that his own study started with just 12 people, which fell to 10 when two dropped out.
Pro-life OB/GYN Dr. William Lile has explained that APR is based on principles that are well understood from progesterone’s common, FDA-approved use in a variety of other pregnancy-related situations. According to the Abortion Pill Rescue Network (APRN), “initial studies of APR have shown it has a 64-68% success rate.” Heartbeat International also publishes first-hand testimonials from women who have benefited from the technique.
In 2023, the academic journal Scientific Reports published a study by Franciscan University of Steubenville neuroscientist Dr. Stephen Sammut that found “progesterone, administered shortly after mifepristone, reversed the effects of mifepristone (i.e., reversed the abortion) with living fetuses present at the end of gestation in 81 percent of cases,” after months of being challenged and rejected by other publications.
“All major studies show that using progesterone to counteract a chemical abortion can be effective since it’s the very same hormone a woman’s body produces to sustain her pregnancy,” says Heartbeat International. “One study even shows an effective rate of 80 percent. Progesterone has been safely used with pregnant women and their babies since the 1950s. To date, statistics show more than 4,500 women have had successful abortion pill reversals and that number grows higher each day.”
However, despite labeling itself “pro-choice,” the abortion movement is notoriously hostile to any and all types of alternatives to abortion, from publicity campaigns to malign crisis pregnancy centers as “deceptive,” to attempt to strip medical licenses from pro-life doctors, to violence and threats against pregnancy centers that are less likely to be prosecuted than purported cases of anti-abortion violence.