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Letitia James doesn’t want women to have access to natural hormones that can save the lives of their preborn babies but has no issue with letting children take experimental “gender-affirming” hormones.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has announced that she is suing Heartbeat International and 11 New York crisis pregnancy centers for promoting abortion reversal treatment.
Heartbeat International is an international group of thousands of pro-life pregnancy resource centers that provide referrals to women looking for abortion pill reversal.
The pro-life groups preemptively sued James on April 30 and are represented by the Thomas More Society.
In a thread posted on X on Monday, James announced, “I’m suing @HeartbeatIntl and 11 crisis pregnancy centers across New York for illegally advertising and promoting an abortion reversal treatment. Abortions cannot be reversed, and this treatment could be incredibly dangerous.”
She continued,
“@HeartbeatIntl is an anti-abortion group that works with crisis pregnancy centers to convince pregnant people to take an ‘Abortion Pill Reversal’ treatment. They claim the treatment is safe and effective, but there’s no scientific proof and medical experts warn that it’s unsafe.
These groups claim that they can reverse a medication abortion by administering a high level of hormones after someone has taken mifepristone, the first of two pills to get a medication abortion. They advertise and promote this treatment on their websites and social media.
This is dangerous and false advertising, and it’s illegal. We’re suing @HeartbeatIntl and these centers to stop promoting this unproven treatment. I’m not going to let anyone put New Yorkers’ health at risk.”
In response, Peter Breen, the executive vice president and head of litigation at Thomas More, issued a statement, saying,
“Today, New York Attorney General Letitia James has decided to proceed full steam ahead with her witch-hunt against New York’s pregnancy help organizations. Delivering on her threat of lawfare against our life-affirming clients, Ms. James has filed a baseless lawsuit in Manhattan—where none of our clients are located—to unconstitutionally silence their pro-life message. In doing so, Ms. James is seeking to keep in the dark women who desire to urgently try to continue their pregnancies.”
He continued,
“Ms. James should ‘follow the science’ and face the facts: Abortion Pill Reversal is a safe and effective option for pregnant mothers who have taken the first abortion pill, immediately regret it, and seek to save their unborn babies’ lives. The administration of supplemental progesterone, which is the heart of the Abortion Pill Reversal protocol, has been used for decades to help pregnant women at serious risk for miscarriage. And thousands of pregnant women, at risk of miscarriage because of taking the abortion pill, were able to have healthy babies because of the timely application of supplemental progesterone through the Reversal protocol.
We will strenuously defend our clients’ right to offer facts, as well as hope, to women in their most difficult circumstances. In the meantime, we invite Ms. James to turn her ire towards organizations like Planned Parenthood, which continue to disseminate inaccurate, misleading, and even false information, about the risks and dangers of the chemical abortion process to women who pay for their services—and have thus far not been targeted with threats or prosecution by Ms. James’ office.”
In a chemical abortion, a woman takes mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone from reaching the fetus, which kills him or her. The woman takes misoprostol three days later, which forces the uterus to contract and expel the deceased baby.
According to proponents of abortion reversal, if a large dose of progesterone is administered within 72 hours of a woman taking mifepristone the baby can be saved.
Heartbeat International claims that progesterone has been used for decades to prevent preterm birth or miscarriages. It also cites a peer-reviewed study showing no birth defects and that the treatment does work.
To James’ accusation that the abortion reversal treatments don’t work, Heartbeat International’s website features numerous testimonies of women who have called for help, taken the reversal treatment, and their babies were born healthy.
Jor-El Godsey, the group’s president, reacted to James’s suit by saying, “New York State laws protect abortionists and abortion on demand up until birth. Now they are targeting those who assist a woman in exercising her right to continue her own pregnancy. It is unconscionable to see the abortion industry and its paid-for-politicians go so far as to insist she complete an abortion she no longer wants.”
James isn’t the first state AG to sue Heartbeat International. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, D, sued the organization last year, claiming there was no scientific evidence to support abortion reversal and argued that the organization was deceiving women and subjecting them to a harmful treatment. The Thomas More Society is also representing Heartbeat International in that case; it has asked the court for a dismissal.
The suits come as left-wing politicians have turned their focus to pro-life pregnancy help clinics following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling. They dub the centers “fake clinics” claiming they use deceptive business practices to trick women.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, D, introduced legislation, which was passed and signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, D, which would charge any pregnancy center that did not provide abortion as engaging in deceptive business practices. The law was quickly ruled unconstitutional, and Raoul announced he would no longer attempt to enforce the law.
In New Jersey, Congressman Josh Gottheimer, D, called pro-life centers “brainwashing cult clinics” and has announced his intent to shut them down.
Letitia James believes that a woman who regrets her decision or is pressured by others to take that first chemical abortion pill isn’t allowed to stop mid-course and try to save her child. Why? Because James says that the treatments to reverse abortion are unproven and unsafe because giving large amounts of hormones might be harmful.
And yet James doesn’t have any issues with gender transitions for minors, which involve pumping children full of massive amounts of cross-sex hormones that are known, by both formal study and anecdotal evidence, to be detrimental to a child’s mental and physical health. In addition, James doesn’t question the off-label use of puberty blockers in children, which are used for the sole purpose of interrupting and interfering with a child’s endocrinological system.
A landmark two-year review commissioned by the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) concluded that there is no evidence that so-called gender-affirming treatments provide any health benefits to minors — and, in fact, the evidence points to the opposite. The evidence against gender-affirming care is so strong, in fact, that the NHS has shut down one of its own clinics, banned the use of puberty blockers in children, and is now investigating adult gender care clinics.
Despite all of this, and the growing number of detransitioners now suing doctors and hospital systems for being harmed by gender-affirming medical treatments and surgical mutilations, James is doing nothing about it. She is not, for example, suing Planned Parenthood, which dispenses puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors, nor any of the many gender clinics in New York State, including a celebrated one at Mount Sinai Health System that opened a year ago.
Meanwhile, James opposes letting a pregnant woman decide to try to save her baby’s life by taking large doses of progesterone, a hormone her body naturally produces and is necessary for a healthy pregnancy.
In fact, it is the chemical abortion pill regimen that is unnatural and dangerous. The first pill, mifepristone interferes with a woman’s hormone production by binding to progesterone receptors in the uterus, ovaries, and placenta, effectively blocking much-needed nourishment from reaching the baby. A child will remain alive without the hormone for up to 72 hours. It is at that point that abortion advocates like James expect a woman to take the second abortion pill, misoprostol, a synthetic prostaglandin that causes the uterus to contract and expel the dead baby.
These two pills, taken together, can cause excessive bleeding, infection, and even death, and recent court decisions have found that the FDA inappropriately relaxed safety protocols and dispensing restrictions when approving the pills, including the requirement for follow-up visits with a medical provider to ensure that the abortion actually worked without complication.
By contrast, with the abortion reversal treatment, women are given enough progesterone to overwhelm and undo the binding effects of mifepristone, hopefully saving the baby. The treatment continues through the first trimester, and ultrasounds and heartbeat checks are done frequently to ensure the baby is healthy and the pregnancy is proceeding.
Does it work? Yes, according to Katelynn Perry, who took the abortion reversal treatment and recently celebrated the first birthday of her beautiful daughter, Aubrey, who is perfectly healthy and thriving. As seen on Heartbeat International’s website, her experience is not rare. Statistics show that more than 5,000 babies have been saved by the abortion reversal treatment.
There would likely be more if so many state law enforcement officials weren’t trying to block and criminalize the reversals and ensure that once an abortion starts, it must continue to a terminal result.
So it isn’t that James and other pro-abortion cheerleaders oppose “unproven, unsafe” treatments. It’s that they oppose one specific kind of treatment: abortion reversal. Rather than support women, she would much rather keep women pressured, alone, in the dark, and without any hope.
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