Catholic Doc Claims He Can Reverse Early Abortions

George Delgado is 'experimenting on women' with controversial procedure, detractors say
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 17, 2017 10:44 AM CDT
Catholic Doc Claims He Can Reverse Early Abortions
The doctor is driven by his Catholic faith to help women who regret taking the first abortion pill.   (Getty Images/LSOphoto)

Several US states, including Georgia, Utah, and Idaho, have enacted laws or are considering bills allowing for "abortion reversals." Per the concept driven by California doctor George Delgado, if a woman takes only the first of two pills in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy and regrets her decision, he'll pump her full of progesterone to try to counteract the first pill. Medical community members, however, say Delgado is "experimenting on women" and using a highly flawed clinical trial of just six pregnant women to spread his agenda, reports Marie Claire. Still, state governments are using it as the basis of bills requiring women who seek abortions to receive info about abortion reversals, with a disclaimer the procedure isn't scientifically vetted. "We're just saying you have the right to try. We're not saying it's going to work," GOP Rep. Ben Smaltz of Indiana said earlier this year.

Critics argue high levels of progesterone have yet to be tested for either safety or efficacy. The four women he wrote about who went on to carry to term (two didn't make it that far) had only taken the first pill, mifepristone, which is less than 50% effective on its own. (Abortion success rates shoot up to 97% when the second pill, misoprostol, is taken.) "Just as we have laws protecting babies who have already been born from being killed, we should have laws protecting unborn people from being killed," Delgado, a practicing Catholic, argues. He's also on the record calling contraception "evil," saying HIV-positive men shouldn't wear condoms when having sex with their wives because it's a "barrier" to the "conjugal embrace." His abortion-reversal hotline has received more than 1,800 calls since 2012, 600 of them in 2016 alone, with women paying $200 to $1,500 for out-of-pocket treatment. (More abortion stories.)

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