Pro-abort docs fret over “standards of care” in RU-486 reversals
by Kelli
The “reversals” also show that the ingestion of medication abortion drugs is never a sure thing when it comes to terminating a pregnancy. While anti-abortion activists tout the alleged “high complication rates” of the process, what they conveniently leave out is that the most common complication is that the patient remains pregnant, and that the protocol needs to be followed up with D&C or vacuum aspiration abortion in order to end the pregnancy….
Why is the “reversal” apparently so successful then? Primarily it is because those who are trying to continue the pregnancy are already in the midst of a failed medication abortion to start with….
“There’s no evidence of any demonstrable effect of the ‘treatment’ these anti-abortion centers are marketing,” Dr. Cheryl Chastine, a provider at South Wind Women’s Center in Wichita, Kansas, said. “The medical literature is quite clear that mifepristone on its own is only about 50 percent effective at ending a pregnancy. That means that even if these doctors were to offer a large dose of purple Skittles, they’d appear to have ‘worked’ to ‘save’ the pregnancy about half the time. Those numbers are consistent with what these people are reporting.”
Dr. Chastine isn’t alone in her assessment. Dr. Dan Grossman, vice president for research at Ibis Reproductive Health [and pro-abortion author at RH Reality Check], told Iowa Public Radio that the “treatment” was unlikely to be doing anything at all.
“[The abortion pill] binds much more tightly to the progesterone receptor, to block it than progesterone itself does…. So there really is not much evidence to indicate, I’m really not aware of anything, that by increasing the amount of progesterone you’re gonna somehow block the effect of this drug….
I think this is really outside of standard of care to just begin doing this kind of treatment, without collecting more rigorous studies about its effectiveness.”
~ Robin Marty, questioning whether attempting to save babies like Gabriel Caicedo (pictured above with his parents and Fr. Frank Pavone) is worth it, Talking Points Memo, March 2
Note: The function of mifepristone is to block progesterone receptors (which is why, in an abortion pill reversal, an extra injection of progesterone is given to counteract these effects). Mifepristone “directly causes endometrial decidual degeneration, cervical softening and dilatation, release of endogenous prostaglandins, and an increase in the sensitivity of the myometrium to the contractile effects of prostaglandins. Mifepristone-induced decidual breakdown indirectly leads to trophoblast detachment, resulting in decreased syncytiotrophoblast production of hCG, which in turn causes decreased production of progesterone by the corpus luteum (pregnancy is dependent on progesterone production by the corpus luteum through the first 9 weeks of gestation—until placental progesterone production has increased enough to take the place of corpus luteum progesterone production).”
[Photo via CatholicPhilly.com]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Planned Parenthood has been giving a third of the FDA recommended amount of mifepristone for an abortion. The “success” rate probably relies a good deal on the misprostil, which is administered at double the FDA recommended dose for the original mifepristone/misoprostil abortion regimen.
So, with a sub-effective (avoiding the word therapeutic) dose of mifepristone being given, why not give some progesterone in the hope of reversing the abortion attempt?
It’s interesting to watch the pro-aborts shooting themselves in the foot, trying to discredit the practitioners who try to keep babies alive.
There is a lot going on here.
Most surprising to me is this admission by the abortion industry that mifepristone abortions fail about half the time.
As to “standards of care” and the “need for more testing,” Dr. Grossman (and perhaps Robin Marty) need to understand an important difference. Unnecessary, optional, lifestyle-choice procedures (such as mifepristone abortions) ought to be carefully tested for safety and effectiveness before they are sold to the public.
Emergency, life-saving treatments – such as progesterone supplements for high-risk pregnancies or as antidote to mifepristone poisoning — can ethically assume more risks while testing is underway.
By all means — do more testing on this life-saving therapy! But keep trying the therapy until is it proved to be too dangerous or ineffective.
Most surprising to me is this admission by the abortion industry that mifepristone abortions fail about half the time.
I agree.
And when you’re concerned more about an experimental treatment’s “standard of care” in trying to help a child who would otherwise die than you are about the standards of care in your own abortion industry – pretending Gosnell is an outlier – you’ve got some major blinders on.
Del, I don’t think anyone in the abortion industry cares about ethics, period. They’re just concerned this could cut into their bottom line.
So, this abortionist from a facility with a troubled legal history has her fangs out for anti-abortion activists because we help women who change their minds during a medication abortion and seek to reverse the potential demise of their unborn child. Whereas, she sees the continuation of the pregnancy as a complication that has to be rectified by a surgical abortion. Thus, her goal isn’t really to help these women or support their choice for pre-natal life as it is to terminate the pregnancy.
The abortion industry is not ethical.
The profiteers have shown that they will cut any corner to maintain their profits — such as the one-third-dose of expensive mifepristone, coupled with the double-dose of cheap (and dangerous) misoprostil.
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I’m looking at Dr. Grossman’s quote now:
“[The abortion pill] binds much more tightly to the progesterone receptor, to block it than progesterone itself does…. So there really is not much evidence to indicate, I’m really not aware of anything, that by increasing the amount of progesterone you’re gonna somehow block the effect of this drug…. “
This is like saying, “Don’t bother giving oxygen to the victim, because carbon monoxide binds much more strongly to hemoglobin than oxygen does.”
It all depends on the dose, and how much more tightly the mifepristone is binding, and how quickly the mifepristone is metabolized, compared to how long the poisoning process takes, and how well the extra progesterone competes for the binding sites…. in other words, there is a lot going on at the same time. In science, we call Dr. Grossman’s statement “hand waving” — creating a conclusion based on insufficient data.
The data is likely available already. A competent metabolic chemist can do the math. This is probably how the progesterone treatment was invented.
I recently tried to post a comment on an atheist and pro-choice website and got blocked. I am not sure what I said that ticked them off. The thread was about the new technique to use DNA from same-sex people to create an embryo. It got onto the subject of abortion and the point that nature aborts many babies.
Here is what I said:
Social Darwinism is the acceptance of natural selection and not random variation.
What’s wrong with that?
People who want drug administration to be supervised via web chat are concerned about the ethical implications of reversing the drugs effects. That’s rich.
You said it, Rachel.