Pro-lifers celebrate as Colorado court strikes down ban on abortion pill reversal
A Colorado court has struck down a state law banning chemical abortion reversals in a major victory for pro-life Americans.
What is abortion pill reversal?
A Colorado law passed in April 2023 forbade medical providers from providing abortion pill reversal (APR) treatment to women who have taken the abortion pill mifepristone, which blocks the pregnancy hormone progesterone. APR treatment involves administering FDA-approved progesterone supplements, which have been shown to successfully reverse the abortion pill’s effects and lead to healthy births.
Research shows that progesterone is effective at preserving pregnancy after taking mifepristone. In a 2018 study, 547 women who took the abortion pill underwent progesterone treatment within 72 hours after taking mifepristone. The protocol had a 48% success rate, including 247 live births and four miscarriages of viable babies after 20 weeks. When divided into subgroups, the researchers found that pregnancies in women who took intramuscular progesterone had a 64% survival rate, while those in women who took high-dose oral progesterone had a 68% survival rate.
Bella Health and Wellness v. Weiser
Certified nurse midwife Chelsea Mynyk, who runs her own clinic in Colorado, provides APR treatment to women who request it. In February 2024, the Colorado State Board of Nursing notified Mynyk that she was under investigation for helping women reverse their abortions. Mynyk sued, and a Colorado court on Friday ruled in her favor. The judge permanently blocked the law because it violates religious beliefs.
“It is not disputed that by effectively prohibiting them from using a particular treatment for pregnant women, this law burdened Plaintiffs’ sincerely held religious beliefs…” the court wrote in its opinion. “[W]hile the clinical efficacy of abortion pill reversal remains debatable, nobody has been injured by the treatment and a number of women have successfully given birth after receiving it.”
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the legal group that represented Mynyk in the case, celebrated the ruling as a win for medical freedom.
“Government officials can’t silence medical professionals and prevent them from saving lives,” said ADF Senior Counsel Kevin Theriot. “Many women regret their chemical abortions, and some choose to reverse the effects of the first abortion drug, which can save their baby’s life. But Colorado’s law wrongly attempted to deny women the freedom to make that choice. The court is right to rule that the state can’t force women to follow through with a chemical abortion when a safe alternative is available—one that Chelsea and the pro-life plaintiffs in this case can skillfully provide.”
New York’s attempts to censor APR advocacy
The victory follows a similar one last year, when a federal judge shut down attempts by New York Attorney General Letitia James to censor pro-lifers from speaking about APR treatments.
AG James had been suing pregnancy centers and their networks for false advertising in promoting APR. She accused them of spreading “misinformation” and making “false and misleading statements” by stating that progesterone supplements may help continue a pregnancy if taken in the first few days after ingesting the abortion pill.
James has made no allegations of APR treatments being unsafe for women or causing harm.
In August 2024, US District Judge John Sinatra ruled that James was trespassing on taxpayers’ First Amendment rights.
“The First Amendment protects Plaintiffs’ right to speak freely about [abortion pill reversal] protocol and, more specifically, to say that it is safe and effective for a pregnant woman to use in consultation with her doctor,” Sinatra wrote in his decision. “Indeed, the ‘very purpose of the First Amendment is to foreclose public authority from assuming a guardianship of the public mind through regulating the press, speech, and religion.’”
The judge also hinted that James’s efforts to silence pro-life centers are Orwellian.
“More to the point—our Constitution and Constitutional tradition stand ‘against the idea that we need Oceania’s Ministry of Truth,’” he added.
