Recently, Dr. Michael Creinin, an abortionist, released the results of his study into the effectiveness of the abortion pill reversal protocol. The study didn’t go well. After 12 patients, it was shut down due to complications the patients were having with the abortion pill itself (The Daily Citizen’s coverage here). But the study itself brings up an interesting bioethical question. 

Should there be another study to confirm the “scientific” effectiveness of the reversal protocol?

Usually, in scientific and medical research studies, there is a “control group.” These people are given a placebo so that the researchers can determine the effectiveness of the treatment and determine if the patients are being influenced by the placebo effect. To confirm the effectiveness of the abortion pill reversal protocol, Dr. Creinin and others want to run a similar test.

The plan was to find a group of 40 women who wanted a surgical abortion volunteer to have a chemical abortion first. Then, the researchers would randomly split the women up into two groups—one would undergo the abortion pill reversal protocol and the other, the control group, would receive a placebo. The problem is that, in this instance, the experimentation is being carried out on living preborn babies, and death is the desired outcome. 

That’s human experimentation in one of its most depraved forms, and it is of no benefit to the preborn baby or his or her mother. 

There’s nothing wrong with reviewing the protocol to make sure that the treatment is safe and effective, for both the mother and the preborn baby, but that shouldn’t result in patients undergoing multiple abortion attempts to find out. Perhaps that means the study doesn’t hold up to what is considered standard, but shouldn’t protecting and maintaining life be more important?

“You study something when there’s a reason to study it, and we have no evidence that suggests abortion reversal is real, while we do have evidence that it’s potentially dangerous,” Creinin said in an interview with Vice. “So, if I were developing a drug I would say, ‘I have to stop.’”

But there isn’t any evidence that the abortion pill reversal process is dangerous to women (Dr. Creinin’s study actually showed that the abortion pill is more dangerous). Medical studies have shown that receiving additional progesterone in the context of pregnancy really doesn’t have any known side effects and puts women at only minimal risk. There is no danger to the preborn baby either. As a result, there is no reason why the reversal protocol should be considered dangerous or subject to extensive testing if it is working and women aren’t experiencing problems. Physicians actually use the drug to help women maintain pregnanciees who are at high risk of miscarrying. 

The original physician who created the reversal protocol, Dr. George Delgado, did complete a case study with more than 700 women who wanted to stop their abortions. It was done in an ethical way, meaning that no preborn lives were put at unnecessary risk or forced to endure multiple abortion attempts in order to confirm the protocol’s safety or effectiveness. Unfortunately, it seems like the study has been pulled from the internet (a smaller study with six patients is still available). 

The pursuit of “science” should not be used as an excuse to abuse living preborn babies to prove or disprove a medical treatment. The monetary compensation that the women receive for subjecting their preborn babies to this study is also incredible problematic. Dr. Creinin had no desire to find out if the treatment worked, and in an interview said that there is “zero” evidence that the protocol worked. That’s not true. About 900 or so babies that have been born after women have been given progesterone. 

There was no reason to run this study in a way that tortured preborn babies or put women at risk, let alone to do it again. Sometimes, things just work. Maybe it’s psychosomatic or maybe the progesterone does make all the difference, but if babies are being born healthy and the women are also happy and healthy, then does having the “scientific proof” for the abortion pill reversal protocol really matter?