If the Trump administration is to take a middling position on abortion, a good supplement would be to back the abortion pill reversal.
As both sides know, there is no middle ground on the matter. That is one sentiment on which the most pro-life and most pro-abortion people can agree. Because it is truly a matter of life and death, every decision inches one way or the other.
President Donald Trump’s contribution to the Supreme Court is a clear pro-life move, as is the more indirect action to freeze Planned Parenthood funding on the grounds of diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. Likewise, his direction for the Department of Justice to back abortion pill mailing is definite evidence of pro-abortion sentiment, along with the initiative for taxpayer-funded in vitro fertilization.
At some point, Trump may choose a side. To fail to do so is to tell the pro-life side that he is pro-abortion, and vice versa.
That’s where abortion pill reversal comes into play. Whereas normal operation within the life matter falls hard on either extreme, APR avoids that fate. To be sure, it is inherently pro-life, as the procedure works to renourish the dying baby through the naturally occurring hormone progesterone. But it is just another choice: one that does not restrict abortion outright, but does assert that it’s feasible to see abortion as the wrong choice. It caters to the liberated indecisiveness that sustains abortion.
The pragmatism here is not meant to diminish the abortion pill reversal, which is in plain conflict with evil. Yet in terms of simple cause and effect, it represents a possibility. And what’s so wrong with a mere possibility?
The pro-abortion lobby could not be clearer in its goals to preserve abortion and IVF, and discredit any alternative. We see as much in its resistance to medicine that aims to treat the root causes of infertility and in its constant straining toward logical extremes of its positions. Such things as pedophilia and polygamy, on the heels of transgenderism, are on track for normalization. And pregnancy centers have been the target of government officials for years, especially in California, where state Attorney General Rob Bonta sued several centers for promoting APR.
The medication works simply: ingest or inject progesterone, and there is a 64% to 68% chance of reversing the starvation mechanism begun by mifepristone. In the event of failure, APR has few side effects beyond hormone-related fatigue, headaches, or spotting. Any heavy bleeding belongs to the realm of the abortion pill, as intended.
Progesterone is the same hormone that is “essential” to IVF treatments. Most fertility doctors prescribe a daily dose of it after egg removal for facilitating embryo implantation and “providing a more hospitable environment.” The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists — fiercely pro-abortion, pro-IVF, and anti-APR — admits that, at worst, progesterone treatment is ineffective due to insufficient data, as “the FDA does not seem to base its decision on safety concerns.”
WHY DOES AMERICA IGNORE THE SUFFERING OF THE UNBORN?
But the pro-IVF lobby is equivalent to the pro-abortion lobby. APR finds no backing in progesterone’s blind approval for the IVF process. So ideological and nonmedicinal is the opposition to APR that even as the American Society for Reproductive Medicine advertises that “studies have shown that pregnancy rates are much higher in [IVF] cycles with progesterone supplementation,” it remains another solidly pro-abortion and anti-APR organization.
Given this illogic, the five pro-life pregnancy centers that California sued have filed an appeal requesting that the state cease censorship of abortion pill reversal information. That was only last week, and awaits a result. Meanwhile, it can do no harm for Trump to step in and back the appeal. If his earlier efforts in favor of the abortion pill are based on reasonable access to it and political favorability, so can be his support for its reversal option.