Saving a pregnancy

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, December 11th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. Coming next on The World and Everything in It: A second chance at life. Earlier this year, a Colorado woman made a choice she regretted. As WORLD’s Leah Savas reports, that mom turned to the internet for help to make it right.

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GREENE: There'd be one moment where I was like, oh, maybe it's not too late. Maybe you can do something about it.

LEAH SAVAS: That’s Mackenna Greene. She’s talking about what was going through her head about a year ago, in the 24 hours after she started a chemical abortion.

GREENE: And then, you know, the other side of me is like, No, you want to be successful. You want to, you know, buy a new house, like, you know, and you can't do those things if you have a new baby, you know, you can't do it, Mackenna.

Greene had found out she was pregnant just days earlier.

GREENE: I have a two and a half year old. I had started a new position at work, I was really wanting to jumpstart my career a little bit. And then, relationally, you know, me and my boyfriend were, we're not married. It was just more of an unexpected pregnancy.

At the time, Greene was 25. All of those factors played into her decision to Google, “abortion pills, delivered to me.”

GREENE: And a couple different agencies popped up, and I went with the one that I did go with because they advertised low pricing.

Greene lives in Colorado Springs. Abortion is legal in Colorado through all 9 months of pregnancy. So she could have easily gone to an abortion facility for the drugs. But she preferred to order them online.

GREENE: I didn't have to meet with, you know, a doctor or anything like that. Just kind of separating myself from having to meet and get emotional with anybody. And then they also offered, like, two day shipping, I think so it was also a matter of, you know, the quicker that I can get it here, the quicker I can get it over with, and the quicker I can forget about it, essentially.

They arrived within two days, as promised. Two drugs. One to block progesterone, a hormone essential to continuing pregnancy. Another to cause contractions. She took the first drugs around 7 p.m. one evening after work.

For the next 24 hours, leading up to the point when she was supposed to take the second set of drugs, she couldn’t stop thinking about what she had done.

GREENE: So I would just kind of really be battling with myself and then just telling myself, well, it's already too late, so you better, you know, you better get used to it.

That’s when her mom stopped by.

GREENE: I broke down and I kind of told her what was happening. And she's like, Well, is there anything we can do about it, and I was like, I don't know.

That’s all it took to prompt Greene to do another Google search: how to stop the effects of the abortion pill. Heartbeat International’s abortion pill reversal website was one of the first results. Her mom watched her son in the other room while Greene ran into the bathroom to call the hotline.

GREENE: I was a wreck. And the woman on the phone, she was wonderful. She told me, you know, like that, no judgment, that you know, she was going to do everything that she could to help me, and that, you know, you know, she was so glad that I called.

The rep said that an abortion pill reversal provider would reach out soon to prescribe progesterone to help halt the effects of the abortion drug. Within an hour or two, A nurse practitioner called from nearby Castle Rock—Chelsea Mynyk. Greene updated her on what was going on, and Mynyk prescribed the progesterone pills. She started taking those pills that same night.

Chelsea Mynyk at her clinic in Castle Rock, Colorado Alliance Defending Freedom

Greene went to Mynyk’s office for an ultrasound the next day.

GREENE: She had said that, you know, things look good right now. Again, she didn't make any promises to me that, you know, things were gonna, like, be 100% or anything.

At that point, there was still a chance the baby wouldn’t make it. Greene kept taking the progesterone and returned to Mynyk for her prenatal care for the first 20 weeks.

At one of the early appointments, she got to see the little flutter of her baby’s heartbeat.

MYNYK: And then this is baby and right here you can see the heart beating

GREENE: Oh, look at that!

In August, Greene’s son got to hold his little sister.

MALE VOICE: Hold the baby.

FEMALE VOICE: Okay, hold the baby. Awww.

GREENE: It's just unfortunate that it's easier to obtain the abortion pill, the chemical abortion, you know, pill and process, than it was for me to obtain the life saving care of the progesterone or the abortion pill reversal. Because, you know, I actually got to speak with Chelsea. But I didn't have to speak with anybody for the chemical abortion kit. It just was, you know, a questionnaire online.

Mynyk found out soon after she prescribed progesterone for Greene that she was under investigation for violating a Colorado law that effectively prohibits prescribing abortion pill reversal treatment. They say it’s not scientifically proven and dangerous to women. But providers can prescribe the same hormone to women at risk of miscarrying.

Mynyk has since joined a lawsuit arguing that law is unconstitutional.

As someone who saw the treatments as a lifeline for her and her baby, Greene says Colorado sends a sad message.

GREENE: Colorado is essentially saying right now that only one type of woman gets to save their child, ones that are, you know, high risk for miscarriages, they're also prescribed the same medication that I was, the progesterone, and I think that's completely unfair

Abortion pill reversal isn’t guaranteed to work. Sometimes a baby will survive a chemical abortion attempt even without progesterone. Other times, the reversal treatment is ineffective. But Greene says Mynyk didn’t give her any guarantees that night she first prescribed the hormone.

GREENE: She gave me hope. Hope that we've caught it in enough time and that I'd be able to see my baby girl one day, and because of her, I did, and I get to look at her face every day.

AUDIO: [Squealing baby]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leah Savas.

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