The right to rescue

Mackenna Greene was 25 years old and had just started a new position at work late last year when she learned she was pregnant. Unmarried and already mother to a toddler, the Colorado Springs, Colo., resident was ready to jump-start her career, and another baby just wasn’t in the picture.

Searching online, Greene found a website that shipped abortion pills to her within two days. She took the first pill in the chemical abortion regimen at home without ever having to talk to a medical representative.

For nearly 24 hours, Greene wrestled with her decision. Finally, she went back to Google, found the Abortion Pill Rescue Network hotline, and called, desperately hoping for a way to stop the abortion drug from taking effect.

The hotline representative put her in touch with Chelsea Mynyk, a licensed nurse practitioner and certified nurse midwife who runs a women’s health clinic in Castle Rock. Mynyk quickly prescribed abortion reversal pills to the young mother. The next day, an ultrasound showed Greene’s baby was still alive.

But now Mynyk, the nurse practitioner who helped save Greene’s baby, is fighting in court to continue providing abortion pill reversal without the fear of losing her license. While the hormone used in abortion pill reversal, progesterone, is legal to prescribe, Colorado effectively bans its use to stop an abortion.

Mynyk is one of several pro-life medical professionals suing Colorado over its law against abortion reversal, passed in 2023. While the state classifies the administration of abortion pill reversal treatment as “unprofessional conduct,” pro-life providers say they’re obligated to help women who don’t want to continue the chemical abortion process. Mynyk joined the lawsuit, Bella Health and Wellness v. Weiser, in April, although it was first filed in 2023. With a deadline for motions for summary judgment set for this ­coming January, Mynyk and her attorneys expect a ruling in the case by fall 2025.

Mackenna Greene with her child. Photo courtesy of Alliance Defending Freedom

It was February—the month after Greene started progesterone treatments—when Mynyk learned in an email from the Colorado State Board of Nursing that she was under investigation for violating state law. According to an anonymous complaint, Mynyk had given a patient “abortion reversal medication,” and that was grounds for discipline. She could lose her license or face crippling fines.

She was devastated. “I was like, how am I going to continue to help these women … that come and they’re, like, desperate to try and save their baby?” Mynyk told me, recalling the moment she read the email. “How am I going to tell them I can’t offer this?”

When Mynyk started offering abortion pill reversal treatment at Castle Rock Women’s Health in 2022, it was a natural addition. She served her first abortion pill reversal patient that year, just a couple of years after hearing that women who had begun the chemical abortion process—involving two drugs taken 24 to 48 hours apart—could take the hormone progesterone to potentially save their babies from death. Medical professionals sometimes prescribe progesterone to pregnant women with a history of early pregnancy loss to help prevent miscarriage. In abortion reversal, it works by neutralizing the effects of the abortion drug mifepristone.

But the next year, Colorado became the first state to effectively ban abortion reversal. The Legislature passed a bill calling the treatment “a dangerous and deceptive practice that is not supported by science or clinical standards.”

Because of the new law, Mynyk removed the information about abortion pill reversal from her website. But then another pro-life pregnancy center, Bella Health and Wellness in Englewood, sued over the law, and in October 2023 a judge blocked its enforcement against the center’s staff. Mynyk said she thought the injunction applied throughout the state and continued prescribing the treatment—but she misunderstood the ruling. She was providing abortion pill reversal to two patients at the time that she received the nursing board email.

Greene said that the day after she started taking the progesterone pills Mynyk prescribed, she went into her office for an ultrasound to confirm the baby was still alive. Mynyk printed up an ultrasound image of the baby, wrote the word “hope” on it, and gave it to Greene.

Mynyk provided Greene’s prenatal care for the first 20 weeks of her pregnancy. At one of the appointments, Mynyk mentioned she was under investigation for violating state law.

“I was really shocked to even hear that such a law existed,” Greene said.

Medical professionals in the state can still legally prescribe progesterone for women who are infertile or at risk of miscarriage, as Mynyk often does. But they can’t prescribe it for abortion pill reversal.

“Colorado is essentially saying right now that only one type of woman gets to save their child,” Greene said. “I think that’s very discriminatory, that one woman’s baby deserves to live in Colorado law’s eyes, and mine essentially doesn’t.”

While Mynyk’s case is ongoing, the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado is allowing her and the Bella Health and Wellness staff to continue providing abortion pill reversal. Mynyk’s lawsuit asks the court to declare Colorado’s law unconstitutional. But for now, the law remains on the books.

Greene gave birth to her daughter in August. Abortion pill reversal isn’t guaranteed to work, and Greene said Mynyk didn’t make any promises. “But,” Greene said, “she gave me the hope … that I’d be able to see my baby girl one day. And because of her, I did.”