“Anne” drove to an abortion clinic in Florida, where she was administered the drug mifepristone, the first dose of the abortion pill regimen.
On the drive home, however, she saw a billboard that said, “Baby has a heartbeat at 18 days.” Anne considered what was going on in her body. Then she saw another billboard on the other side of the interstate. This one said, “Your mom chose life, so should you.”
Convicted by the message from the billboards, Anne pulled off to the next rest area and googled “abortion pill antidote.” That’s how she found the website, www.abortionpillreversal.com.
Thankfully, Anne contacted the hotline in time and was able to take progesterone, a hormone that is used to block the effect of mifepristone. In the next two weeks, she was treated twice at the office of Dr. William Lile, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist who is also known as “The Pro-Life Doc.” The baby still had a heartbeat and was healthy. Mom was healthy, too.
Dr. Lile—who has a passion to educate the public on the truth that each person is created in the image of God at the moment of conception—shared this testimony in a video produced by Alliance Defending Freedom. In the video, Dr. Lile emphatically answers yes to the question, “Is the reversal of the effect of the abortion pill really possible?”
“If we can intervene early enough, usually within the first 72 hours, we can save the life of the baby by supplementing with progesterone,” he said.
A legal advocacy organization, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is currently representing pregnancy resource centers in four states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Washington) regarding abortion pill reversal legislation and threatened lawsuits against the pro-life organizations. Additionally, ADF is challenging a Colorado law that bans the life-saving progesterone treatment and is fighting to uphold the Women’s Right to Know Act in Kansas, which requires doctors to inform those seeking abortions about risks and available options (including abortion pill reversal).
In July, Thomas More Society attorneys filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Culture of Life Family Services against California Attorney General Rob Bonta for his attempts to shut down abortion pill reversal services.
“Attorney General Bonta refuses to recognize a woman’s right to reverse an abortion in progress when she has changed her mind about the procedure,” said Peter Breen, Thomas More Society Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation. “Abortion pill reversal gives these women a second chance to choose life, a choice that Bonta and the abortion industry would strip from her. In his quest to silence pregnancy help ministries, Bonta is violating Culture of Life Family Services’ right to speak and aid women in exercising their reproductive privacy rights.”
Despite criticism from politicians and pro-choice advocates, who claim that abortion pill reversal is not a medically-sound option, research indicates that the treatment does save babies.
In 2018, the medical journal Issues in Law and Medicine published a peer-reviewed study that found the treatment to be successful in saving unborn children between 64 and 68 percent of the time when administered within 72 hours of taking mifepristone. In the ADF video, Dr. Lile says he has been successful with abortion pill reversal six out of six times.
According to the report, Hope For A New Generation, abortion pill reversal saved over 5,000 children’s lives from 2012 to 2023. The study was a collaboration of Charlotte Lozier Institute, Care Net, Heartbeat International, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, and Option Ultrasound Program by Focus on the Family.
In an ADF op-ed entitled “Women Deserve the Opportunity to Choose Abortion Pill Reversal,” Bernadette Tasy criticizes government officials and pro-choice leaders seeking to ban the treatment, saying that those considering abortion should be given the freedom to know about all life-affirming choices.
“For years, abortion advocates have claimed they are trying to protect ‘a woman’s right to choose.’ But in practice, many of these abortion advocates have shown that they only support a woman’s right to make some medical decisions. When it comes to abortion pill reversal, they suddenly stop being so ‘pro-choice,’ ” Tasy writes.
“It is not the job of government officials to determine what care medical professionals offer their patients, nor can these officials prohibit pro-life pregnancy centers from informing women about their options.”