Elizabeth found herself in panic mode a year ago as her boyfriend Ben called her begging her to leave Planned Parenthood.
Elizabeth feared it was too late. She had consumed the first abortion pill. In her heart, however, she knew she needed to stop this process. She began to try to make herself vomit. It didn’t work.
Elizabeth shared her story alongside Ben during Babies Go to Congress this past June.
Both Elizabeth and Ben agreed to correspond with Pregnancy Help News via an email to share the depth of their story.
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It was a phone call to the Abortion Pill Rescue Network (APRN) that ultimately stopped the chemical abortion process for Elizabeth.
The first pill in a chemical abortion, mifepristone, blocks progesterone in the woman’s body. The second pill, misoprostol, is taken several hours later and causes contractions. Elizabeth had consumed the first pill when she and Ben decided this was not what they truly wanted to do.
In the days and hours leading up to her Planned Parenthood appointment, Elizabeth said she contemplated every possible scenario. She asked friends and co-workers what she should do. She and Ben had an “on again off again” relationship. She was just uncertain what was best.
“When I took the pill at Planned Parenthood, I knew instantly I had made the wrong choice,” she said.
Ben contacted her, she said, and he told her to, “Get out of there. Kids are wonderful!”
Ben said when he realized where she was going, he knew he had to try to talk to her.
“I was at my house with my two other kids when I looked in their faces and realized how my life would have been so much different if I would have gone through the same process with them and not had them,” he told Pregnancy Help News. “So, I called Elizabeth and told her to get out of there. I knew that it would have been a mistake that we would have regretted for the rest of our lives.”
When Elizabeth was unable to throw up the medication, she and Ben began searching online for home remedies to stop the process.
“I didn’t feel hopeless at any point. I can’t explain it,” she said.
They came across the 800 number that changed everything.
Elizabeth said they found the number on page three of their Google search results. She told herself it was probably a scam, but she called anyway. She said she felt certain someone would ask for a credit card number, but it was free.
The APRN is made up of more than 1,400 healthcare professionals, pregnancy centers and hospitals that administer the APR protocol. APR consists of prescribing progesterone to counter the effects of mifepristone. It is an updated application of a treatment used since the 1950s to prevent miscarriage. Statistics show that more than 5,000 lives have been saved through APR and counting.
The timing seemed to be perfect, Elizabeth said.
The date she consumed the pill was June 6, 2023, and Elizabeth had made five previous appointments with Planned Parenthood but did not go. The medical provider who was with the APRN had only been available since June 1. Elizabeth said she was the very first caller.
When she was prescribed the progesterone for Abortion Pill Reversal, her insurance noted they could not cover the medication. The pharmacist, Elizabeth said, was someone she had never met before. However, he was able to communicate with the insurance company and get it covered. She did not have to pay for it.
She and Ben then found themselves at Care Net of Paradise. An ultrasound was performed, revealing the beating heart of the baby they feared they had lost.
Elizabeth said it was “the most magical feeling I had ever felt.”
Everyone in the room was crying, she said, including the women at Care Net who later developed a long-term relationship with the couple, guiding them through the pregnancy and beyond.
For Ben, it was more than he could have ever hoped.
“When I first saw Evelyn on the sonogram machine in Care Net, my heart leapt,” he said.
“I could see the fear and anxiety leave him and turn to joy,” Elizabeth said.
Their daughter Evelyn was born in January of this year, and the couple continued to visit with Care Net regularly.
The center was able to help Elizabeth not with only items for her baby, but they also assisted with new tires for her car and grocery help.
“The most important thing they gave me was confidence,” she said.
The hormonal shift through the pregnancy was difficult for Elizabeth, she said, and she found herself “breaking up” with Ben more than once. The relationship counseling helped Ben understand her emotional changes and guided them to understand one another better, she said.
Ben said he was amazed by how the center was able to not only teach him about parenting, but it also helped him with his relationship with Elizabeth.
“Things were very tumultuous and rocky in our relationship, and because of Care Net it really brought us together,” he said. “From the first visit on, life became more harmonious. We would go up to Care Net fighting like cats and dogs, and we would leave there holding hands and wanting to go on an evening date. They have helped us in our relationship and as parents.”
They are now a family.
Elizabeth looks back on that day at Planned Parenthood, an organization she said she had once supported. She said there was no options counseling, but they allowed her to sit and take time to decide. As she cried alone in a room for up to two hours, she said she felt pressured as the employee kept asking if she was ready to take the pill. Elizabeth said she was told “not to put too much weight” on the issue because the pregnancy was “far from being a baby.”
It was under that pressure, and as the clinic told her they were closing for the day, that she swallowed the pill.
“I wanted someone – anyone – at Planned Parenthood to talk to me,” Elizabeth recalled. “I got that at Care Net. Care Net felt like a village.”
Choosing to share their story publicly was difficult, but the couple said they felt it was important. They first told their story at a Care Net banquet while Elizabeth was still expecting.
When they stood together with five-month-old Evelyn at Babies Go to Congress, an initiative of Heartbeat International, it was one year to the day that Elizabeth took the abortion pill.
Elizabeth said their goal is for more women to know about the Abortion Pill Reversal.
“If even one abortion is reversed because I made them aware of APR, I would be happy,” she said. “I’m forever in debt to APR, Care Net and Heartbeat International and many others.”
Tweet This: If even one abortion is reversed because I made them aware of APR, I would be happy” - Mom who saved her baby through Abortion Pill Reversal
The name “Evelyn” means “wished for a child,” Elizabeth said, adding, “I feel like I won the lottery.”
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) and Pregnancy Help News.
