“My son will be celebrating his ninth birthday soon… and [I] can’t wait to see him live up to his great promise in the years to come.”
Erika is a California mom whose words could have been spoken by a thousand other moms on Mother’s Day.
But Erika’s reflection and gratitude is a story of motherhood that the state of California would prefer to erase.
Nine years ago, Erika found herself under intense pressure to abort her unborn child. She started a chemical abortion. Erika’s words were submitted as a legal declaration of her positive experience with Abortion Pill Reversal (APR), amidst a lawsuit that seeks to silence those who share the science and benefits of the medical protocol.
APR is a safe and effective way for a woman to improve her odds of continuing her pregnancy after she has ingested mifepristone – the first pill in the abortion drug regimen. And, for nearly 20 years, licensed California healthcare professionals have legally prescribed this treatment – bioidentical progesterone.
But after the Dobbs decision, Attorney General Rob Bonta took aim at Heartbeat International and RealOptions Obria Medical Clinics, pro-life ministries that connect women with the APR treatment after they have begun a chemical abortion, change their minds, and seek to save their unborn children’s lives.
Bonta’s goal: Suppressing politically disfavored speech about APR and seeking to silence us through crippling fines and a permanent injunction.
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California’s lawsuit opened with the following:
“For the vast majority of pregnant people who choose to undergo an abortion, their most common emotion is relief.”
The “relief” of a completed abortion that “pregnant people” – also known as mothers – experience is arguably a bit less common than California claims. And the medical complications of chemical abortion are likely a bit more common – especially since the Biden Administration removed the in-person dispensing requirements for abortion drugs.
Despite nearly three years of litigation and extensive discovery, Bonta’s office has failed to produce a single consumer complaint or a single woman claiming she was harmed by APR. And it has fallen short of the legal basis for restricting constitutionally protected free speech.
In fact, Heartbeat’s statistics show that more than 8,000 lives have been saved through the Abortion Pill Rescue Network.
Tweet This: Heartbeat International’s statistics show that more than 8,000 lives have been saved through the Abortion Pill Rescue Network.
If Bonta’s goal were neutral accuracy in public medical messaging, he would seek to regulate conversations on both sides of the issue. He has not. Instead, he seeks to impose penalties only on speakers offering California women the option to continue pregnancy – to embrace motherhood.
On Wednesday, April 29, our attorneys argued in state court that California is not permitted to wield consumer fraud statutes to suppress one side of an ongoing scientific and moral debate. Even in the context of medical conversations, the First Amendment “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech.”
Our freedom of speech is worth defending. But we’re fighting to speak about the most fundamental matters of life and death, so babies have a second chance to grow, and women have a second chance at motherhood.
California professes to care for that “small” group of “pregnant people” who started the abortion drug regimen and experience regret and desire for a second chance. But California systematically seeks to “protect” them from the truth – studies that point to improved pregnancy continuation rates of 64-68% following the APR treatment, compared to a continuation rate as low as 8% without APR.
We’re fighting because real California mothers benefit from our good news – mothers like Cynthia, who said she “did not fully understand the abortion pill… when [she] first received and took it.” But “[s]hortly after taking mifepristone… [she] experienced profound emotional distress and regret.”
Years later, she’s the “now the proud mother of three children, including the son [she] almost aborted.”
For women like Najia, who admitted she was apprehensive about motherhood because her child’s father had left when he found out she was pregnant. The abortion provider she visited told her that her baby was just a “clump of cells” and she could always “make another one” if she would just “sling around more sperm and more eggs.”
Upon seeing her ultrasound picture, Najia realized her baby was not simply a clump of cells and she successfully reversed the effects of the abortion pill.
For women like Ashley, who wrote, “I had made a life-and-death decision for another person out of fear.” But, something was clear even during the APR network hotline call: “APR is not guaranteed to work; it is not a miracle.”
But Ashley understood that there was a chance that APR could improve her baby’s chances of surviving the first chemical abortion drug. “And,” she said, “I felt that, as a mom, I owed it to my baby to do what I could to improve those chances.”
For thousands of women, Abortion Pill Reversal has been a gift – a chance to allow them to embrace their callings as mothers. We’re fighting so more California women can benefit from that immense gift.
Editor’s note: Jessica Prol Smith is director of government relations for Heartbeat International, the world’s largest network of pregnancy help organizations. Her work has been published in FoxNews.com, USA Today, The Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, and other publications. Smith can be found on X @JessicaProl. Heartbeat International manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) and Pregnancy Help News. Heartbeat is currently the subject of two lawsuits brought by state AGs concerning sharing information about Abortion Pill Reversal.
