By Dave Andrusko
Another day, another lawsuit against pregnancy help centers, in this case for offering abortion reversal treatment.
California pro-abortion Attorney General Rob Bonta held a press conference on Thursday to announce a lawsuit “against two organizations [Heartbeat International Inc. and RealOptions] over abortion pill reversal treatment, calling their statements about it ‘false and misleading.’”
Abortion Reversal is for those women who after taking the first of two drugs that make up “medication abortion” regime have a change of heart. Instead of taking the second drug, they take progesterone, which is an updated application of a treatment used since the 1950s to combat miscarriage. As many as 68% of these babies can be saved—and over 4,000 to date have been.
Not only did Bonta falsely say “there’s absolutely no scientific basis to support the claim,” adding “I can’t emphasize that enough for anyone who’s listening,” he asserts that “Both organizations know this, yet continue to advertise and promote abortion pill reversal,” according to Alan Riquelmy for Court House News. That’s a smear in anyone’s book.
After challenging the numbers and the research, Bonta dragged out a falsehood that NRL News has corrected on numerous times: “Additionally, the groups don’t tell people about severe bleeding as a possible side effect. A study designed to test abortion pill reversal had to stop after three of its 12 participants were taken to an emergency room for bleeding. Medical organizations like the American Medical Association refuse to support abortion pill reversal, Bonta said.”
NRLC’s Randall K. O’Bannon has debunked this study repeatedly. But confident that they’ll be never be called to task, pro-abortionists again and again (and again) trot out the 2019 study as definitive “proof” that APR not only doesn’t work but is dangerous.
“But, in fact, what the data actually seemed to show was that reversal with progesterone often worked,” Dr. O’Bannon wrote, “If there was a cautionary message in the results, it was that failing to offer progesterone after the mifepristone appeared to lead to severe bleeding.”
Note this illuminating first sentence from a story by Kristen Hwang [https://calmatters.org/health/2023/09/california-sues-crisis-pregnancy-centers-abortion-reversal]“In its continued battle to bulletproof the right to abortion, California is suing two major anti-abortion groups over claims made about the viability of ‘abortion pill reversal,’ Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Thursday.”
Californians have, for all intents and purposes, an absolutely unimpeded “right” to abortion. What drives people like Bonta crazy is that there are more women-helping centers than there are abortion clinics. “While less than 62% of counties have an abortion clinic, nearly 80% have a crisis pregnancy center, according to a database compiled by CalMatters,” Hwang reports. “In rural areas where there are acute primary care shortages, the centers outnumber abortion clinics 11 to two.”
So what could be better than a handy-dandy lawsuit which bleeds the resources of these life-affirming organizations?
Bonta in the suit asks an Alameda County Superior Court judge, among other things, to stop the false and misleading statements by the two groups and impose a penalty of up to $2,500 per violation against each group. He also seeks to recoup the costs of the legal action. He said their actions are violating California’s False Advertising Law and Unfair Competition Law.
Wonderful people, aren’t they?