Abortion pill reversal has been a point of serious contention lately, with some states even mandating that abortion providers inform their patients that the effects of the abortion pill on the baby may be reversible. And yet this is an issue that many pro-life people know little about. For example, few pro-life people realize that even the Planned Parenthood locations that don’t perform surgical abortions still perform chemical ones. But as the medical science behind abortion pill reversal has strengthened, so has the fight against it.
In brief, many abortion providers will choose to give women progesterone blockers to terminate their pregnancies. This cuts off the supply of nutrients to the baby, essentially starving the fetus. They will then be given medication causing their uterus to contract and expel the body. But some pro-life doctors have found that they are able to medically reverse these effects, giving the baby a better chance at survival. And for giving women the choice to not have an abortion, they have been called, well, anti-choice.
The crux of the issue is this: they don’t care about women’s choice. If they did, they would support women who try to reverse their abortions just as fervently as they support those who seek abortions. But it violates the central dogma: abortion is good, and if you oppose it you hate women. Even if you’re a woman. Even if you oppose it because you want to help the woman. Planned Parenthood says it’s about hope and acceptance: they take those that the conservative Christians call sluts and give them medical care. But what happens when the woman comes back, crying and begging for the pill to be reversed? They’re told there’s nothing the doctor can do for them.
This is outrageously hypocritical. Planned Parenthood’s narrative is that a woman never deserves to be turned away because of a decision she made in the past. They won’t shame the woman for sleeping around. They won’t tell her that her lifestyle needs to change. They’ll give her an abortifacient medication, a bag of contraceptives, and tell her to have a nice day. How dare the Christians stick their noses in her sexual life? After all, the notion that sex necessarily leads to babies is so passé.
But when the woman comes back, her mind changed and made up, and she asks the doctor to reverse the pill, the doctor says it’s impossible. Trying to reverse an abortion is wrong, and, frankly, if she didn’t want the abortion she shouldn’t have taken the pill in the first place.
They can’t have it both ways. Either a woman has a right to choose, or she does not. It’s irrational to say that she has the right to kill her unborn child, but not the right to try and save it. Abortion pill reversal has about a 55% success rate, but those within the pro-choice community all too often brush this off.
In a rather angry (but hollow) article on the website Medium, the author states that being in favor of a woman’s right to reverse an abortion doesn’t make you pro-woman. Her opening sentence is self-contradictory; “California doctor George Delgado doesn’t believe in a woman’s right to choose, but he does believe in a woman’s right to make a ‘second choice’ to reverse her abortion.”
Her two clauses conflict with each other because she’s so vague. In the first clause, Delgado, an abortion reversal pill advocate, does not believe in a woman’s right to choose. In the second clause, he does. That is because the author does not mean that he’s against a woman’s right to choose her own medical care, only that he doesn’t believe it is her right to kill her child. Let me rewrite the opening sentence for her: California doctor George Delgado doesn’t believe in a woman’s right to choose to kill her baby, but he does believe in a woman’s right to choose to stop her abortion.” Of course the author is saying that she believes it’s wrong for Delgado to only support choice when it’s a choice he wants the woman to make. But she is doing the same thing, saying that women should not be presented with the option to try and reverse their abortions.
It comes down to a simple truth: pro-choice advocates are not really for a woman’s right to choose her own healthcare. They’re in favor of a woman’s right to have an abortion. If someone says that’s murder, they’re just trying to shame you. If someone says that you can choose adoption, they’re trying to create an environment of guilt. If somebody says that they can help you when you decide that you want to keep your baby but you’ve already taken the pill, they’re peddling pseudo-science.
When abortion itself is good, an essential part of a free society, then opposing it is wrong. And that’s how many of our pro-choice neighbors reconcile this in their minds. Abortion is a procedure like an appendectomy. And if someone says an appendectomy is morally wrong, then you may feel justified in questioning their judgment. In the same way, if abortion is a helpful medical procedure, then maybe a doctor who opposes it should be questioned, or even seen as a danger to bodily autonomy.
But this draws into sharp relief the alleged issue from the real issue. Allegedly, our disagreement is on women’s right to make their own choices. In reality, our fight is over whether or not abortion is good. If our opponents were simply there to support a woman’s choice, they wouldn’t have a problem with a doctor helping a woman reverse her abortion. It works more than 50% of the time, saving the baby and providing unimaginable relief to the mother.
The true target here is forced acceptance, in much the same way as is it with the LGBTQ agenda. If you say abortion is wrong, you’re creating a culture of stigma and shame. Even if you try to help desperate women out of their abortions, you’re still part of the problem. Even if it works 50% of the time, they wouldn’t have a problem killing their baby if you just stopped making them feel bad about it with, like, ultrasounds and science and stuff.
So let’s stop pretending this is about women’s health. Nor is it about women’s rights. This is about forcing acceptance of abortion and shaming the doctors and women who want a way out. When an emergency medical procedure works more than 50% of the time but pro-choice people still don’t want it accepted, that should tell you something. If this was about women, maybe they would find a way to compromise with people like Delgado. But it’s not. It’s about normalizing abortion and quelling all dissenting opinions of what’s best for women. And that’s why there’s no middle ground.