Censoring pro-life choice

Google last week abruptly removed all ads from the pro-life group Live Action. The “disapproved” ads, which the tech giant had already run for several months, included promotions of abortion pill reversal, a treatment process that is 64-68 percent effective in saving unborn babies after their mothers take the first pill in the abortion drug cocktail. Facebook also removed some pro-life ads from its platform.

The change came after The Daily Beast, a news tabloid site, published an article criticizing Facebook and Google for allowing the ads. It cited a report from the London- and Washington-based group the Center for Countering Digital Hate claiming abortion pill reversal is “dangerous medical misinformation” and that the procedure can cause “severe hemorrhaging,” based on a 2020 study.

But the report itself is based on misinformation, and Google’s decision to discontinue the ads could keep life-saving information from mothers who start the drug-induced abortion process but change their minds.

In 2019, researchers planned to enroll 40 patients in a study to test the effectiveness of abortion pill reversal treatment, which involves repeated doses of the hormone progesterone. After enrolling only 12 patients in a six-month period, the researchers canceled the study because three women hemorrhaged. But only one of the women who hemorrhaged actually received progesterone: The other two took placebos after taking the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone. Some physicians have suggested these results indicate mifepristone, not progesterone, was the dangerous drug.

Despite those facts, pro-abortion groups have promoted the line that abortion pill reversal is dangerous for women while the abortion regimen itself (which includes mifepristone and a follow-up dose of misoprostol) is completely safe.

Hanah Wranosky took mifepristone in late August at an abortion center in San Antonio and immediately regretted it. She had anxiety attacks over the next several hours after her boyfriend picked her up from the abortion facility and woke up at 4 a.m. because she couldn’t sleep.

The next day, she texted a woman who had counseled her at a local pregnancy center to see if there was anything she could do to save her baby. The woman told her about abortion pill reversal, but Wranosky said she was skeptical. “When you go on the internet and you look up abortion reversal, there’s a bunch of negative stuff on there, like, ‘You can die, you can hemorrhage, it’s a myth, it’s not real,’ and all that stuff,” she said. “There’s very little actual stories from people who have actually done it.”

But Wranosky still chose to take the first dose of progesterone about 26 hours after the first abortion pill. She was so nervous that she considered taking the misoprostol, the second drug in the abortion pill cocktail, but ultimately continued the reversal treatment, taking two tablets twice a day. She attended a follow-up appointment the next week at the pregnancy center for the ultrasound and said she was “overfilled with joy” when the technician said she saw the baby’s heartbeat. A second ultrasound the first full week of September confirmed that the baby was still doing well.

“A lot of pro-choice people are very against it, and to me, it’s very strange,” Wranosky said about abortion pill reversal. “Taking a reversal is still controlling what happens with your body and your life. It’s still a choice, so I don’t get why they’re so against it.”

An abortionist quoted in The Daily Beast article revealed the root of the opposition. “It’s projecting this false narrative that people aren’t sure, that people aren’t getting counseling, that they’re getting tricked into making these decisions and then changing their minds,” said Nisha Verma. “And that then contributes to other attempts to restrict abortion.”

As of Tuesday, Google had yet to respond to Live Action’s request for an explanation for dropping the ads. The company continues to carry abortion pill ads, though the drug has led to major complications and even death in some women. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is pushing Facebook to stop “medical misinformation” from pro-life news sources.

“How sad that the regimen that saved my son has been banned from advertising on Google,” tweeted Rebekah Hagan, who successfully used abortion pill reversal in 2013. “Women do change their mind! I am one of them! My son is alive because of abortion pill reversal. Forever grateful for my second chance at choice!”