Priya* wasn’t the first woman in India to contact the helpline. Through the years, other women had reached out, hoping someone on the other end could help them reverse a chemical abortion already in progress.
In a message to Heartbeat International, Johanna,** co-founder of a pro-life organization in India, shared that most of the women who called the Indian helpline were either too late in their abortions or their doctors had already convinced them to go ahead and take the second pill in the two-part chemical abortion regimen.
“But that is not the case anymore,” Johanna said. “We’ve got our first successful abortion pill reversal through the Pregnancy Helpline [India].”
Johanna spoke with Pregnancy Help News about pregnancy help in India and this groundbreaking event.
In 2023, Priya was back in the workforce. Her firstborn was a toddler, and Priya was ready to refocus on her career.
But then she found out she was pregnant.
Priya chose to do what over 80% of Indian women do when they decide to have an abortion: she chose to have a chemical abortion.
After taking the first pill though, she and her husband immediately regretted the decision.
“She’d taken the mifepristone pill in the bathroom,” Johanna said.
But when she came out, her husband said, “I don’t think we’re doing the right thing.”
Priya went to her doctor, searching for a way to stop the abortion process.
“I regret this," she told the doctor. "Can we undo this?”
“No, there’s no way,” Priya’s doctor told her. “What you’ve started you’ve got to finish.”
Everywhere she turned, Priya heard a version of the same answer: the chemical abortion process couldn’t be undone.
Johanna said this is when Priya “turned into this little lioness” set on protecting her unborn baby’s life. With the support of her husband and her mother-in-law, Priya went to Google.
And at last, she found a different answer.
Her search led her to the Abortion Pill Reversal hotline, which directed her to Pregnancy Helpline India. The helpline personnel connected Priya with their in-country doctor who immediately started Priya on progesterone.
Progesterone is a natural hormone needed to sustain pregnancy. When a woman takes mifepristone, the first pill in the chemical abortion process, and then regrets her decision, the APR treatment entails prescribing bioidentical progesterone to counteract the fatal effect of mifepristone and allow the baby to continue growing.
When Priya’s OB/GYN discovered she’d started the APR protocol, she refused to continue her care.
“If you’re going to do this, you can’t come here anymore,” the doctor told Priya.
Despite research indicating that progesterone has been used safely in pregnancies for decades, the OB/GYN warned Priya that APR was “dangerous to the baby” and would cause her baby to be malformed.
Undeterred, Priya continued her pregnancy.
Later, at her 20-week ultrasound appointment, Priya again faced skepticism from the medical community.
“There’s no way,” the radiologist told Priya when she told him she’d taken mifepristone and then started the APR process.
But a thorough scan revealed the opposite: there was a way. The ultrasound showed a living baby with no indication of any abnormality.
With the ultrasound report in hand, Priya went back to visit her OB/GYN. The doctor still refused to believe the baby was safe and healthy.
“I’ll only believe it when I see it,” she told Priya.
A few months later, Priya gave birth to the proof the doctor required: a living, healthy baby girl.
This healthy little girl – now almost one year old - is alive, and Johanna said both parents are “over the moon” because of the help Priya received when she reached out to the APR hotline in 2023.
The success of that day can be traced back even further, though, to something that happened in Israel in 2018. It was a conversation between two pro-life advocates: Johanna and Jor-El Godsey, president of Heartbeat International.
When Godsey realized Johanna was from India, he said to her, “You know what you’ve got to do? You’ve got to start a pregnancy helpline.”
Heartbeat is the largest network of pregnancy help organizations in the U.S. and globally and manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN). The APRN consists of more than 1,400 healthcare professionals, pregnancy centers, hospitals, and pharmacies worldwide that administer the APR protocol.
Godsey went on to explain his reasoning based on Option Line, the 24/7 pro-life contact center also managed by Heartbeat International and through which APRN contacts are made.
The highest volume of callers that Option Line was getting from outside of the U.S. at the time were from India, he’d said.
That singular conversation began what Johanna calls the “symbiosis” between Heartbeat International and the helpline in India, noting that Pregnancy Helpline India was “birthed” out of the Option Line.
Inspired by the conversation with Godsey, Johanna worked with Ellen Foell, International Program Specialist for Heartbeat, to create an approach that would work in India. The process culminated in the helpline that, in 2023, connected Priya with the APR process and saved her baby’s life.
“In my two visits to India I have been struck by the dedication and the perseverance of the pro-life movement to reach each woman,” Foell told Pregnancy Help News, “And this reversal is just one example. Heartbeat is grateful for each effort and continues to serve, equip, and strengthen each effort.”
India has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, with findings estimating over 15 million abortions annually.
“That’s one every 2.2 seconds,” Johanna said.
Abortion is legal up to 24 weeks in India, and even beyond that under certain circumstances. The impact on women is significant; the Indian government reports an estimated 63 million women are “missing” from the country’s population, largely due to sex-selective abortions.
Yet, India is experiencing a growing pro-life movement.
“Organizations seem to be rising up weekly, across India, in rural and urban areas,” Foell said. “Each one demonstrates the passion to reach and rescue women in unplanned pregnancies and their families.”
And, when women in India, like Priya, choose an abortion and then regret taking the first pill, the baby may be saved by the APRN.
“The team at the Abortion Pill Rescue Network stands ready to assist those in need of information and support to reverse the effects of mifepristone,” said Christa Brown, senior director of Medical Impact with Heartbeat.
“Abortion pills are readily available over the counter in most parts of India and are the most common way women in that country abort their pregnancies,” said Brown. “However, abortion pill reversal is also readily available to anyone in India who has regret after taking the first abortion pill.”
Despite intense opposition from pro-abortion advocates, more than 6,000 lives, including Priya’s baby, have been saved through the APRN. Studies show that APR has a 64-68% success rate.
“We have assisted women in all 50 states in the U.S. and in 96 other countries including India,” Brown said. “Women around the world deserve the option to continue their pregnancies even after starting a chemical abortion.”
The highlight of this story is the little girl, alive today in India with her grateful parents. Because her brave mother found the support and medical help she needed through the APRN hotline and Pregnancy Helpline India she was not among the millions of Indian babies aborted in 2023.
But there’s another highlight to this story - one that may have the impact of saving even more babies in India. It’s the changed mind of Priya’s OB/GYN.
Despite discontinuing Priya’s care because she started the APR process, the doctor’s skepticism eventually gave way to curiosity.
“Tell me more,” the doctor said upon seeing Priya’s healthy baby girl.
This impact on the medical community, with the hopes that more Indian women will find accurate information when they too want to “undo” their abortions, is what Johanna calls the “cherry on top.”
Tweet This: A skeptical OB-GYN's mind was changed in India after she met her patient's baby who was saved through Abortion Pill Reversal.
*Name changed at her request
** Last name withheld at her request
Editor's note: 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.
