In December of 2023, Mackenna was faced with an unplanned pregnancy. A flood of emotions filled her being, none of which were good.
A couple of days later, she ordered an online abortion pill protocol, which was shipped right to her front door. After taking the first pill, she began to sense regret, but continued to rationalize her decision.
However, once reality began to set in, Mackenna knew she had made “a major mistake.” Through an online search, she found the Abortion Pill Reversal Hotline. The hotline put her in touch with a nurse practitioner who prescribed progesterone, the hormone that is blocked after the first abortion drug, Mifepristone, is taken.
Through weekly care and ongoing support, Mackenna continued her pregnancy and delivered a healthy baby girl in the summer of 2024.
Today, as she looks at her beautiful child, Mackenna finds it difficult to comprehend that she once wanted to end her pregnancy. She is grateful for the Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) procedure and for Chelsea Mynyk, a nurse practitioner and certified nurse midwife who operates the Castle Rock (Colorado) Women’s Health Clinic.
Unfortunately, because Colorado is the only state in the nation that prohibits all medical professionals from offering APR, not everyone celebrated this story. In January 2024, an anonymous individual filed a complaint against Mynyk and her clinic when they learned that she was providing APR for Mackenna. The Colorado Board of Nursing subsequently opened an investigation.
In response, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a motion to intervene in an existing APR suit (Bella Health and Wellness v. Weiser) on Mynyk’s behalf. In October 2023, a federal district court issued a preliminary injunction preventing Colorado from enforcing the APR ban on Bella Health while that lawsuit proceeds.
With its advocacy, Alliance Defending Freedom is seeking to overturn the Colorado law that “violates both religious freedom and freedom of speech.”
“By depriving women of the choice to try to save their baby and preventing health-care professionals from offering APR to women who want it, Colorado is pushing an extreme pro-abortion agenda. These unconstitutional actions cannot be allowed to stand,” a press release from Alliance Defending Freedom stated.
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) is also representing pregnancy resource centers in four states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Washington) regarding APR legislation and threatened lawsuits against the pro-life organizations.
Despite criticism from politicians and pro-choice advocates, who claim APR is not medically-sound, 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 APR to be successful in saving unborn children between 64 and 68 percent of the time when administered within 72 hours of taking mifepristone. According to Hope For A New Generation, a report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, Care Net, and other pro-life organizations, APR saved over 5,000 babies from 2012 to 2023.
In an Alliance Defending Freedom op-ed, Grant Atkinson declared that Colorado must allow women the opportunity to choose the potentially life-saving care offered by APR.
“Colorado has no right to prevent health care professionals from doing their most important job: saving lives,” he said. “Expectant mothers who regret taking mifepristone deserve the chance to try to save their children, and health care professionals like Chelsea Mynyk must be allowed to provide that opportunity.”
In an Alliance Defending Freedom post on X, Mackenna shared her testimony in the hopes of encouraging other women faced with the same dilemma.
“I currently live in a state where ARP is not legal. It’s not legal for a provider to provide life-saving medication, but it’s legal for me to obtain a chemical abortion,” she said. “I just want other women to know that this is a viable option, and there are so many resources that can help and provide that life-saving care.”