How Abortion Pill “Reversal” Became a Powerful Right-Wing Legal Weapon

Blue-state attempts to crack down on the treatment could end up shielding “fake clinics” from any oversight.

Garnet Henderson, Susan Rinkunas, Mother Jones
Oct 15, 2025

Crisis pregnancy centers have played a central role in the anti-abortion movement since the 1960s, often misleading and confusing people seeking abortions while purporting to help them. They mimic the appearance of abortion clinics, with similar-sounding names and even lookalike logos. Their volunteers sometimes pose as clinic staff to divert abortion patients from getting care. Their websites are teeming with disinformation, including claims that abortion is unsafe or linked to future mental illness, breast cancer, and fertility issues. “A killer, who in this case is the girl who wants to kill her baby, has no right to information that will help her kill her baby,” Robert Pearson, founder of the very first CPC in the US, once declared.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/how-abortion-pill-reversal-became-a-powerful-right-wing-legal-weapon/

Colorado becomes the first state to ban controversial abortion pill reversals

As pills emerge as the latest front in the war over abortion, the practice of administering progesterone after mifepristone may soon be labeled as ‘medical misconduct’ in the state.

Claire Cleveland, KFF Health News
May 3, 2023

In Glenwood Springs, Colorado, registered nurse Katie Laven answers calls from people who’ve started the two-pill medication abortion regimen and want to stop the process.

“They are just in turmoil,” said Laven, who works at the Abortion Pill Rescue Network and answers some of the roughly 150 calls it says come in each month. “They feel like, ‘Well, maybe an abortion would make it better.’ And then they take the abortion pill and they’re like, ‘I don’t feel better. In fact, I feel much worse that I did that.’”

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2023/05/colorado-bans-abortion-pill-reversals/

What Abortion Pill ‘Reversal’ Really Accomplishes

It’s more than an unproven medical treatment—it’s a view into the antiabortion movement’s larger project.

Sep 5, 2022

THE AMERICAN ANTIABORTION movement is on a full-court press to remake the nation in its image. In June, its decades-long campaign to install sympathetic Supreme Court justices paid off with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, which stripped away the constitutional right to abortion. Now, the movement is pushing for draconian personhood laws (legislation granting fetuses the same rights as people) in an effort to make abortion murder.

In some states, the push is already working. In Georgia, for example, a new law allows expecting parents to claim fetuses as dependents on their tax returns. These victories are the result of a shrewd, ambitious strategy. The rise of an experimental treatment known as abortion pill “reversal” is part of this plan. Although it might appear a peripheral concern—hardly anyone actually seeks out this treatment—it’s a distinctly revealing pet project. The story of the rise of abortion pill reversal contains the antiabortion movement’s blueprint within it.

Continued: https://www.wired.com/story/abortion-pill-reversal-essay/

How an unproven abortion ‘reversal’ treatment has advanced in the US

By Samantha Putterman
April 4, 2022

When Texas enacted a ban on abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy, an international women’s health advocacy nonprofit organization saw a 1,100% increase in orders for so-called abortion pills.

The two-drug combination enables women to terminate their pregnancies within the first 10 weeks. Though the spike in demand has since leveled off at Aid Access, purchases hovered around 175% higher than usual in the months after the Texas law took effect.

Continued: https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/apr/04/abortions-reversible-how-unproven-abortion-r/

Explainer: What is ‘abortion pill reversal’?

The unproven, potentially dangerous use of progesterone to ‘reverse’ a medical abortion is spreading globally, supported by the US Christian Right

Teddy Wilson
27 May 2021

US religious conservatives have claimed for years that a medical abortion can be ‘reversed’ if high doses of the hormone progesterone are taken.

The problem is that there is no medical evidence to support this claim – and the only trial into the method’s effectiveness and safety was abruptly halted in 2019 after several participants were hospitalised with severe haemorrhaging.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/explainer-what-is-abortion-pill-reversal/

USA – As “Abortion Reversal” Laws Spread, Doctors and Scientists are Pushing Back

As “Abortion Reversal” Laws Spread, Doctors and Scientists are Pushing Back

August 27, 2019
by Rahima Nasa

When North Dakota passed its “abortion reversal” law, Tammi Kromenaker geared up for a fight.

This March, North Dakota joined a swell of states requiring doctors to tell patients that they can reverse medical abortions. The bill is based on a contested study that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology (ACOG) said doesn’t meet scientific standards.

Continued: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/as-abortion-reversal-laws-spread-doctors-and-scientists-are-pushing-back/