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(LifeSiteNews) — A research paper on abortion pill reversal written by a professor at a Catholic university has been accepted by an academic journal after months of challenges and rejection due to the subject of the report.
Dr. Stephen Sammut, a neuroscientist who works as a professor of psychology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio, told LifeSiteNews that his scientific study was finally accepted by the academic journal Scientific Reports after facing rejection elsewhere during the peer-review process.
The study supports the potential for using the hormone progesterone to reverse the effects of mifepristone, a drug used for chemically induced abortions. While he is associated with a Catholic institution, the professor maintains that the research is rooted in objective science rather than personal beliefs.
“My results are important because faith does not impact their outcome,” Sammut told LifeSiteNews via email. “I am investigating a chemical process within a physiological system. The experiments are conducted in rats and no amount of holy water or catechizing would convert them into any faith.”
“They [rats] are not prone to social or political influence either, nor the decisions of any court! What my experiments show is an objective, purely physiological perspective.”
The paper, titled “Progesterone-mediated reversal of mifepristone-induced pregnancy termination in a rat model: an exploratory investigation,” was originally submitted to the open-access peer-reviewed journal Frontiers on October 5, 2022. Sammut explained that it reached the “final validation” stage of the review process before being rejected by the journal’s editorial board on February 24, 2023.
On March 15, the paper was submitted to the Scientific Reports journal, where it was accepted following peer review, at the end of June and published on July 6.
Suppressing research that contradicts the pro-abortion narrative
Sammut explained that, during the review process with Frontiers, he and his research assistant Christina Camilleri – whose name is included on the article – responded to each of the “questions and comments from the reviewers that required a response.” After they surmised from comments made by reviewers and the handling editor that the paper would be accepted, “suddenly we received notification that the manuscript was rejected as it did ‘not fulfill the standards established for the journal to be considered for publication.’”
“This was vague and strange as the question of manuscripts meeting journal standards is usually addressed when the article is first submitted,” Sammut told LifeSiteNews. “Thus, I requested that the editorial board ‘clearly and exactly’ indicate ‘what aspects of the article do not fit the quality acceptable by the journal.’”
The first reason provided by the editorial board for rejecting the paper was that it did not meet the requirement that “a satisfactory primary endpoint must be to achieve normal pregnancy in 100 percent of cases,” whereas the results showed a continuation to the end of gestation in 81 percent of rats treated with progesterone following mifepristone.
“This is an unheard-of standard,” Sammut said about the reason. “Firstly, if outcomes in science were all-or-none, there would be no uncertainty and no need for statistics.”
The professor also pointed out that this standard is especially unreasonable “because we are dealing with an immensely complex [physiological] system. What we were addressing involves a competitive process – progesterone or mifepristone competing for the binding site in the body. This means that there is a natural distribution of responses – it cannot be all-or-none.”
“There are probabilities of success and probabilities of failure and as scientists we seek to investigate what this balance of success/failure is, which is what our study sought to do,” he added.
Another critique from the editors insisted that the research did not address “both the short and long-term health and behavior of the offspring,” to which Sammut replied that the paper is simply an “exploratory investigation.” He told LifeSiteNews that “in our discussion section of the paper we actually had addressed that this would be part of future work, but first we needed to establish if reversal was even possible.”
“Lastly, the manuscript might be interpreted as supporting the notion of a pharmacological reversal of induced pregnancy termination in humans, a concept which in line with the recent statements by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the U.S. and the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the U.K. cannot be supported,” the editors told Sammut.
The editorial board was referring to a joint statement released by the medical organizations which claimed that there is “no evidence” that “the use of progesterone to reverse the effect of mifepristone… increases the likelihood of continuing pregnancy, compared to expectant management alone.”
Mifepristone is a drug which stops the hormone progesterone from producing its effect in the body to sustain a pregnancy. It is typically used alongside misoprostol, which induces labor to deliver the dead baby. Abortion pill reversal treatment consists of taking progesterone, as quickly as possible after taking mifepristone, to override the impact of the deadly drug in order to attempt to save the baby.
Dr. Matthew Harrison, one of the pioneers of the abortion pill reversal technique, told LifeSiteNews in 2019 that this process “makes biological sense.” He explained the importance of testing the process on animals and cited a study that found most rat pups without the treatment died while 80 percent experienced a successful reversal from mifepristone’s effects.
Harrison noted that the research also found differences in uterine linings within the two groups of rats, which confirmed that “progesterone essentially nullified all the other effects of RU-486 [mifepristone].”
A December 2022 report also showed that 4,000 babies in the United States have been saved in the past decade by abortion pill reversal. In response to the statement rejecting this technique, Sammut said that “it indicates that what is published needs to meet a narrative… rather than a genuine investigation of a question.”
“If there is no evidence, why are we not encouraging pre-clinical research to investigate the question? Why are we shutting down such research that could provide the answer or, at the very least, initiate the discourse?”
Evidence supporting the role of progesterone in reversing chemically induced abortions
Despite the editorial board’s criticism, Sammut’s research does support the potential for saving unborn babies from the deadly mifepristone drug with the use of progesterone.
“Our study showed that mifepristone alone causes a complete (100 percent) pregnancy termination [and that] 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,” Sammut explained. “Thus, our study confirms the potential for progesterone to reverse an abortion during the early stages of the abortion process.”
Sammut noted that the results point to the need for further research and reiterate “what we already know and has been known for many, many years about the chemistry of progesterone and mifepristone.” He also raised ethical questions pertaining to why this kind of research was “not carried out previously” and the reason behind “the same organizations that are supposed to be looking out for the well-being of humanity (scientific and medical) irrationally and unscientifically deny the potential for such a process, ignoring the existing chemical and pharmacological, as well as physiological evidence and not allowing for the due process to take place if, as they claim, we do not have sufficient evidence.”
“Our obligation as scientists is not to distort the truth, to bend to ideology, political platforms, or disordered whims,” Sammut told LifeSiteNews when asked what advice he would give to fellow researchers who encounter a similar situation of baseless rejection. “Our obligation as scientists is solely to rigorously and genuinely search for and serve the truth, present within nature around us, using the God-given capabilities/talents within our respective fields of expertise.”
“They [researchers] must speak out, address and challenge, with every ounce of effort that they have in store, this insult to the dignity and integrity of academia in general, but specific to this situation of science and medicine.”
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