Michigan Bill Would Force Doctors to Suggest Dangerous, Unproven “Abortion Reversal”

A recent study on these reversals had to be halted when multiple patients were hospitalized.

Activists gather in the Utah State Capitol Rotunda to protest abortion bans, on May 21, 2019. Rick Bowmer/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

A Republican lawmaker in Michigan has introduced legislation that would require doctors to inform patients seeking abortions about a procedure for “abortion reversal”—an idea with no scientific backing that researchers say can cause serious damage. 

For years, conservatives have been pushing the idea that patients who receive medical abortions—those induced with medication rather than surgery—can reverse the process by taking progesterone. Last month, researchers at the University of California, Davis, who were studying the effect of using progesterone to reverse abortions were forced to halt the study after serious “safety concerns” emerged. Three of the 12 patients in the study had to be hospitalized due to severe vaginal bleeding.

But if the Michigan legislation becomes law, doctors would be forced to present abortion-reversing progesterone as a valid option.

“It’s called the Abortion Pill Reversal bill, and it basically allows a woman to be informed that if she should change her mind during a chemical abortion, that she be provided information that a treatment is available,” state Rep. Beth Griffin, who introduced the bill on January 22, told WSJM News

Medical abortions involve taking a series of two pills. Religious conservatives have argued that women who take mifepristone, the first of the two drugs, and then take the hormone progesterone instead of the second pill, misoprostol, can “reverse” their abortion. Heartbeat International, one of the largest anti-abortion organizations in the world, claims that it has helped women reverse more than 450 abortions, and it promotes an abortion pill reversal hotline on their website. Currently, eight states—Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Utah—require abortion providers to tell patients about “abortion reversals.” Five of the states passed these laws in 2019 among a flurry of anti-abortion legislation nationwide. To date, no peer-reviewed study has ever shown that an abortion can be reversed with progesterone after taking mifepristone. 

In June 2019, the American Medical Association sued North Dakota over its abortion reversal law, arguing that it forced doctors to “provide patients with false, misleading, non-medical information.” In September, a federal judge blocked the law temporarily, writing that the law lacked “any medical or scientific evidence to support such a message.” A final ruling has not been issued. 

While the University of California researchers were unable to find any evidence that abortions could be reversed by not taking the second abortion pill, they did find that patients who only took the first pill may be at “high risk of significant hemorrhage.” Abortion, by comparison, is considered a “low-risk surgery,” according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, with a complication rate of less than 1 percent

Griffin’s bill is before Michigan’s House Committee on Families Children and Seniors, where it is awaiting a hearing. 

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate