Legal Docket: Second chances

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s The World and Everything in It for this 18th day of August, 2025. We’re so glad you’ve joined us today. Good morning! I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. It’s time for Legal Docket.

BARRETT: I was in crisis mode. Because I always wanted the baby. I just really needed one person to say, we’ll do this together. Whether it was my sister or my neighbor… I just wanted someone to say, you’re not alone, we’re gonna do this, you know….

That’s Elizabeth Barrett. She lives in California. She was pregnant, but it wasn’t planned. The timing was all wrong.

Still, she hesitated before choosing abortion, only reluctantly taking the abortion medication, and even then, desperate for an off-ramp: abortion pill reversal: but is it a real option?

EICHER: Not for Letitia James, it isn’t. As attorney general of New York, she’s using the power of her office to fight abortion pill reversal. Twenty years ago, she was pregnant and the timing was wrong. But to hear her tell it for her, there was no hesitation, no turning back. Here she is in 20-22.

JAMES: As a former city council member…(use full quote) I was just elected and I was faced with the decision whether to have an abortion or not. And I chose to have an abortion. I walked proudly into Planned Parenthood. And I make no apologies to anyone! To no one! To no one!

REICHARD: Now she’s working to shut down pregnancy centers that tell women they have more than one choice.

Last year, James sued Heartbeat International and 11 affiliated pregnancy centers in New York. Her claim was that they had engaged in false advertising. James alleges the centers are deceiving women by promoting abortion pill reversal.

EICHER: The abortion pill protocol involves two medications: mifepristone and my-so-prostel misoprostol. The first cuts off the baby’s nutrition. The second drug is taken about 48 hours later. Misoprostol is what expels the baby from the womb.

But supporters of abortion pill reversal say that if a woman takes progesterone after the first drug instead of misoprostol that drug can counteract the deadly effects possibly keep the pregnancy going and save the baby.

REICHARD: But James says there’s no scientific evidence to support that. And the FDA hasn’t approved it.

She’s not alone in that view. California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a similar lawsuit against five pregnancy centers and Heartbeat International.

BONTA: We sued a chain of five so-called crisis pregnancy centers in Northern California and an anti-abortion group for misleading patients about so-called abortion pill reversal, a risky and experimental protocol.

One of the lawyers defending the pregnancy centers is Peter Breen of the Thomas More Society. Breen says they’ve been fighting for a couple of years now.

BREEN: They wanted to use state false advertising and deceptive practices laws. Started with Illinois, they actually passed a new law to try to target pregnancy center speech. We were able to go to court and get that enjoined and eventually defeated entirely.

EICHER: Breen’s team is both defending and filing counterclaims.

And they’re up against a medical establishment that says abortion pill reversal is not supported by scientific evidence. A-COG, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, as well as the AMA, the American Medical Association.

Both of them insist abortion pill reversal may be harmful.

REICHARD: So I contacted ACOG and the AMA and requested an expert to make that case, or at least to point me to the scientific studies they rely on.

Only ACOG responded—declining an interview but pointing me to the organization’sfact sheet. So I read it. Here’s what I was able to find out: the studies that it cites are inconclusive. They show neither clear harm nor clear benefit. And yet, supplemental progesterone has been used for decades to help women at risk of miscarriage.

EICHER: When you go to trial, you need expert testimony to help make your case. Both sides do have experts, but Breen says ACOG has no study that shows that supplemental progesterone is harmful.

Indeed, supporters of abortion pill reversal point to case studies, animal studies, evidence of the mechanism of action, and hundreds if not thousands of women who say it worked for them.

The other side says: sure, but what they don’t have are gold-standard clinical trials.

Breen says there is a very good reason they don’t:

BREEN: It's unethical to tell a woman who wants to save her baby, we're going to give you a placebo instead of giving you progesterone. I mean, you just can't do that study. And what was funny is ACOG was saying, well, there's no randomized controlled trial. Well, we went back through ACOG's other recommendations in other areas of reproductive health. They repeatedly rely on case studies. The same thing we have in this situation, because a lot of times it's unethical to do a randomized controlled trial on human women who are pregnant or considering being pregnant.

This isn’t just about science. It’s also about politics—similar to what’s happened in policy fights over gender transitions for minors.

Professional medical societies sometimes mix political values into their medical recommendations even when long-term, good quality evidence isn’t there. And that means women who want objective and pressure-free advice may not get it.

REICHARD: Elizabeth Barrett knows that frustration firsthand.

You heard her a few minutes ago—conflicted, uncertain, searching for help.

The moment that changed everything came right in the middle of a breakup:

BARRETT: I was not trying to get pregnant…everyone around me was like, it's the easiest way. Hold off till you're ready. Have an abortion.

She made multiple appointments at Planned Parenthood.

During one visit, she says staff didn’t want her to see the image of her baby.

BARRETT: Seeing the ultrasound which I had to fight to see it they didn’t want to show me…and when I finally got to see it, I was like, Oh wow! Okay. I gotta get out of here. I’m not ready. I’m not ready.

Still, she was torn. She went back. She swallowed the medication then she heard from the baby’s father, Ben.

BARRETT: Maybe a minute, maybe at most, after I took the first pill, he texted me: 'You know what? Kids are wonderful. I don't regret my two children. Let's do this. We can do this. If you haven't taken the pill yet, get out of there.'

EICHER: Of course she had taken it, so they Googled frantically, and buried on page three of Google search results found the Abortion Pill Reversal hotline.

BARRETT: I didn't want to call… I was like, this is a gimmick, and they're going to want a credit card number. So I did call, and they never asked for a credit card… and that was the beginning of our journey that way.

Within 20 minutes, a local doctor called in a prescription. But when she got to the pharmacy, her insurance wouldn’t cover it. She didn’t have the money, and at the counter, she broke down—until someone stepped in.

BARRETT: And he was like, 'Is this a life saving medication?' Is this something that someone will die if they don’t have it? And I said yes. He said, 'Okay, I can put it through as an emergency order then,' and I can give it to you right now. So that’s what he did and I started taking it that night.

Barrett had been through a chemical abortion before.

That time, she began to miscarry even before taking the second pill, so she braced for the worst.

BARRETT: And I got a completely different result this time from taking the progesterone… She was born… healthy, and it's been the best decision I ever made.

EICHER: They named her Evelyn, only later learning the name means “wished for child,” or, “desired.” Her parents are now engaged and they are expecting a baby boy soon. The pregnancy center offered free counseling that helped them work through challenges and stay together.

Barrett believes women deserve the chance to try—to save their babies and to make decisions based on accurate medical information.

REICHARD: She sees miracles in the chain of events that saved baby Evelyn; appointments she didn’t keep, a hotline she almost didn’t find, a pharmacist who could’ve locked the door.

BARRETT: I hate the thought that other people will be robbed of the opportunity to even try and I just don’t think it’s fair to shut that opportunity off to anybody who wants it.

Medical societies like the AMA say baby Evelyn doesn’t prove abortion pill reversal works, only that some pregnancies survive the first abortion pill.

For attorney Peter Breen, the issue is both medical and legal:

BREEN: For a woman who has started a chemical abortion in that two-pill regimen, she is desperately wanting to change her mind. She needs help right away. And so the state has no role in stopping a woman who is trying to save her baby from a chemical abortion in progress. Abortion pill reversal provides her that alternative. It gives her a fighting chance for her and her baby.

Breen argues the constitution will not tolerate courts silencing one side of a public debate—

BREEN: What is the upshot here? These attorneys general are not just suing to say, you're wrong. They're suing to say you're wrong and a court should enjoin you, silence you from saying this message.

Appeals are pending in both states, and this matter may eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

And that’s this week’s Legal Docket.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.