In the last month, there have been two new important studies on abortion pill reversal (APR) – the use of progesterone to reverse the effects of mifepristone (Mifeprex), or RU-486.  An American Thinker article last year described early results of abortion pill reversal therapy using progesterone.  Currently, more than 600 women have been treated with progesterone protocols to reverse the abortion pill, and the latest results of a new study (currently under review) by George Delgado and others of 600 women from the APR program show that 60-70% of pregnancies survive when the best protocols for abortion pill reversal are used.

It has been known since the 1980s that some early pregnancies survive RU-486.  A new analysis of the original mifepristone literature in a second article by Davenport, Delgado, Harrison, and Khauv estimates the embryo survival rate after mifepristone, with current medical abortion doses, to be in the range of 25%.  This is important, because the large difference between 60-70% survival with progesterone reversal and the 25% survival rate if a woman just takes the mifepristone, omits misoprostol (the second drug in abortion protocols), and just waits means that progesterone reversal is an effective therapy.  Although abortion advocates have asserted that the more than 300 babies who are alive with progesterone therapy would have survived anyway, these new studies demonstrate that the progesterone therapy made the difference between life and death for these pregnancies.

The invention of RU-486 or mifepristone (the abortion pill) by scientists at Roussel-Uclaf (successor to Hoechst, which made Zyklon B for the Nazis) was announced in ecstatic terms in the early 1980s.  Scientists and population controllers were excited to find a new fertility control technology as an alternative to surgical abortion (Potts).  Mifepristone is an antagonist to progesterone – the principal pregnancy hormone named for being PRO gestation.  Note: Mifepristone should not to be confused with the morning after pill (Plan B), which is taken within 72 hours after a condom break or if couple omits contraception, before a positive pregnancy test.  Mifeprex (the brand name in the USA for mifepristone) terminates a confirmed pregnancy.

Early abortion researchers and population controllers cheered the development of an abortion method that had the promise of putting abortion in a woman's own hands without the interference of doctors.  However, the early scientists studying the drug found that things were not that simple.  Because mifepristone alone often did not result in a complete abortion and left retained pregnancy tissue behind (even though it killed the embryo most of the time), a second drug (usually the prostaglandin misoprostol) was added to make abortion by pill more effective.  However, the two-drug regimen worked better if the second drug was given 24-48 hours after the mifepristone.  The time gap between the two drugs allowed for ambivalent or remorseful women to attempt to reverse the effects of mifepristone with progesterone therapy.  We know also that women are frequently coerced in to undergoing abortion, so the reversal therapy allows them a second chance.

The original medical abortion studies of mifepristone alone used higher doses of mifepristone, and most were restricted to gestation under seven weeks.  Under these original conditions, according to the Davenport article, embryo survival after mifepristone alone in the best and largest study from Finland was 11.5%.  When misoprostol was added and given orally as in the U.S. FDA trials by Spitz, published in the 1998 New England Journal of Medicine, embryo survival seven weeks and under was 1%.

Although the FDA protocol required the larger 600-mg mifepristone dose and confined use to under seven weeks' gestation, abortion enthusiasts expanded use of the two-drug mifepristone regimen to nine and later ten weeks of pregnancy.  Other modifications were made in the regimen – in particular, vaginal use of misoprostol to achieve a higher rate of complete abortions at later gestations and home use of misoprostol.

There has been a longstanding attempt to convert medical abortion to a do-it-yourself procedure.  However, in 2003-2004, not long after FDA approval of mifepristone in the U.S., four California women died from toxic shock from the bacterium Clostridium sordellii.  The victims were Holly Patterson, a northern California high school student; Chanelle Bryant, a young African-American woman from Los Angeles; Oriane Shevin, a lawyer; and Vivian Tran, a Vietnamese student teacher from Orange County who died suddenly on a trip with girlfriends to Las Vegas.  These deaths led to an investigation by medical authorities, including exhuming Ms. Tran's body to check for C. sordelli toxin.  Not long after these deaths, abortion researchers started to dose misoprostol buccally, holding it in the cheek, which produced a more acceptable percentage of complete abortions but apparently with less risk of toxic shock.

With current medical practice, almost 50% of early abortions under nine weeks use the abortion pill rather than surgery.  Now we know beyond a doubt that for vulnerable young women like Andrea who immediately regret beginning the abortion process, an effective, life-saving treatment is available in the form of a 24-hour hotline, staffed by nurses, linking them to more than 300 participating physicians.