A UK doctor whose license to practice medicine has hung in the balance for nine months because he provided Abortion Pill Reversal to women has prevailed against the pro-abortion offensive against him.
Dr. Dermot Kearney had conditions imposed upon him last May by the UK’s Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), which decreed that he “Must not prescribe, administer or recommend Progesterone for abortion reversal treatments.”
The restrictions came after complaints by abortion providers and activists. The MPTS registered 10 allegations but did not substantiate them and embarked upon an apparent effort to tie Kearney up in a months-long or longer administrative process while banning him from prescribing APR - that is, until his legal counsel appealed to England’s High Court.
“There's no doubt that the reason the case is dropped was because of the threat of the High Court,” Kearney said. “In the High Court you have to have evidence and they had absolutely no evidence.”
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The restrictions went into effect May 12, 2021, with an Interim Orders Tribunal (IOT). They remained so through an IOT early review on Aug. 3, 2021, and an IOT 6-month review on Jan. 16, 2022.
Kearney’s case was due to be heard before the High Court Feb. 24, but he was notified earlier in the month that the UK’s main medical regulatory body, the General Medical Council (GMC), had lifted the restrictions.
The hope for pro-life advocates is that his having overcome the concerted attempt to derail APR in the UK by besmirching his practice of it will have positive implications for medical providers who wish to provide reversal in the UK and beyond.
A commitment to doing the right thing
Kearney is a consultant cardiologist and general medical physician working in Britain’s National Health Service. He has commented during the case about his conscience being a driving factor in his treating women who have approached him for assistance with attempting to reverse their chemical abortion.
While he is responsible for helping 20 of the 32 UK mothers who saved their unborn children through APR during the period when the protocol was initially available, it also weighs on him that more women haven’t been helped, and their unborn children saved – especially while UK government bodies banned him and another doctor from providing the treatment.
While Kearney and the other doctor, Eileen Reilly, were banned from providing APR in the UK, women there have continued to request the treatment. Reilly’s restrictions were still in effect at the time of Kearney’s exoneration.
There was no prospect of upholding any of the allegations
Kearney traveled to the U.S. right after he was to make his appearance before the High Court to present on his experience with providing APR in the UK for a professional association of pro-life doctors, medical students, and other providers. Arriving 24 hours late due to flight delays and cancellations and minus his luggage, Kearney promptly took to the stage before the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) 2022 Matthew Bulfin Educational Conference in Nashville ready to share specifics of his experience administering APR in the UK and being suspended from being able to do so.
Toward the end of his address Kearney told those in attendance the good news.
“So, the evidence was looked at at last by case investigators,” Kearney said, “and the way they phrased it about that was, there was no prospect of upholding any of the 10 allegations that were brought against me. So, they recommended that the case it should be dropped.”
The GMC’s statement had said:
“The case examiners have considered the information provided by MSI Reproductive Choices, openDemocracy, Safe Abortion Action Fund UK and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and decided to conclude this case with no further action.”
Kearney first became aware of APR in 2014 while serving on the council for the Catholic Medical Association (CMA) UK, when a pro-life group requested that the CMA consider providing the treatment.
There wasn’t a lot of information available about APR at the time beyond a small number of publications in the medical press, he said, but they decided to look into it.
“When abortion pill reversal first began in the U.S. nobody in the UK was aware of it,” Kearney said.
As the years went by more reports became available.
‘‘It makes biological sense" - ‘‘I bet you it would work’’
A quote that convinced him perhaps more than anything else, he said, was from professor Harvey Kliman of Yale medical school in a 2017 New York Times article:
‘‘It makes biological sense,’’ says Dr. Harvey Kliman, director of the reproductive and placental research unit at the Yale School of Medicine. ‘‘I think this is actually totally feasible.’’ Kliman, who has published research on progesterone and miscarriage, is in favor of abortion rights, and made clear he wasn’t advocating widespread use of the treatment. But if one of his daughters came to him and said she had somehow accidentally taken mifepristone during pregnancy, he said, he would tell her to take 200 milligrams of progesterone three times a day for several days, just long enough for the mifepristone to leave her system: ‘‘I bet you it would work.’’
From there the CMA UK heard from another pro-life organization inquiring into the possibility of APR being made available to UK women.
Kearney had by then been elected president of the CMA and promised to continue to pursue it.
He went to the annual CMA conference in Dallas in 2018 and met with Dr. George Delgado and others who were involved in reversal in the U.S. and became familiar with the regimens that were being used.
At this point, Kearney said, they still knew very little about how they could provide APR on a practical level in the UK.
Delgado, of California, and Dr. Matthew Harrison of North Carolina, had both independently explored the possibility of APR years earlier. Delgado would eventually establish the first network of providers administering APR, and later turn management of the network, now the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN), over to Heartbeat International.
Progesterone is a long-established treatment for women
The APR protocol entails prescribing progesterone, the natural hormone in a woman’s body necessary to sustain pregnancy, to counteract the first of two abortion pills.
Prescribing progesterone is a long-established treatment for women at risk of miscarriage due to low progesterone in pregnancy.
Chemical abortion is a two-drug process involving mifepristone, which blocks progesterone in a woman’s body with the goal of starving the unborn baby. The second drug, misoprostol, taken 24-48 hours later, causes her uterus to contract and deliver her deceased child.
If a woman acts quickly enough after taking the first abortion pill, she may be able to save her child through Abortion Pill Reversal.
A 2018 peer-reviewed study found that 64%-68% of the pregnancies were saved through APR, with no increase in birth defects and lower preterm delivery rate than the general population. The APRN’s statistics show that to date 3,000 lives have been saved through APR and that number continues to grow.
Every patient is entitled to know all of the treatment options available to them
of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists/Lisa Bourne
Kearney said that between 2018-2019 the CMA wrote to the GMC, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of General Practitioners, and the National Health Service of England inquiring about implementing APR.
“And we got very non-supportive noncommittal responses,” he said.
These organizations came up with every excuse as to why not to support it, said Kearney, the main one being the claim that there was no evidence.
The CMA wrote the NHS three times, and amid the noncommittal responses eventually said it would be going public with the protocol.
In its writings to the GMC, the CMA inquired about what to do in a situation where a woman has taken mifepristone, changed her mind, in effect withdrawing her consent for the abortion, and approached a physician for help - how should a doctor respond to her request?
The GMC responded that as a regulatory body it cannot offer clinical advice, Kearney said, but directed the CMA to its literature.
It said that every patient at any stage of any treatment process is entitled to know all of the treatment options available to them, entitled to informed consent of any management strategy and any treatments being offered to them, and they should be informed as to why decisions have been made.
“The important thing was that they had the right to be able to choose from valid treatments that there was at least some evidence for,” Kearney told the AAPLOG audience.
Registration with the APRN and the first calls for APR in the UK came in 2020.
The first APR case that they know of was with Reilly in April 2020. Kearney’s first case was in June 2020.
Kearney explained for the medical conference how UK women who take the abortion pill, regret it, and approach their abortion provider get no help, being told they must take the second pill. They then get referred to their regular doctor, after which they are typically directed back to the abortion provider. Some will go to emergency departments for care.
“Universally, they were turned away being told, ‘Sorry, there's nothing we can do,’” Kearney said.
The found the Abortion Pill Rescue Network through Heartbeat International
Eventually either locating it themselves or through a friend or family member, in almost all cases, he said, someone went on an internet search and found the Abortion Pill Rescue Network through Heartbeat International.
“We did have some who went through some of the pro-life organizations,” Kearney said, but the majority came through Heart International.”
Kearney provided the AAPLOG group a summary of APR outcomes in UK between Reilly and himself during the time they were able to prescribe APR treatment.
Total number of calls for help – 144
Total number who commenced APR – 91
Total number who continued APR – 67
Total number lost to follow-up – 8
Total number with continuing pregnancies/ Babies born – 32
Breaking the numbers down further, 32 live births out of 67 is a success rate of 48%; 32 live births out of 60 (excluding late miscarriage) is a success rate of 53%; 39 successful responses to APR out of 67 is a success rate of 58%; so, with 32 live births + 7 late miscarriages, the overall success rate they saw was 48-58%.
Of the total number of 144 calls for APR help, Kearney said, “Now it may not seem like a lot, but this is for a service that nobody knew was available. There was no very little awareness of it.”
of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists/Lisa Bourne
Kearney shared the circumstances unique to providing APR service in the UK for the pro-life medical conference.
Ninety-eight percent of abortions in the UK are provided by the NHS at taxpayer expense with 75% performed by private providers.
Chemical abortion was available in the UK 10 years prior to its U.S. approval by the FDA in 2000.
In the UK there is a very high percentage of chemically induced abortions, which are allowed up to 24 weeks.
In England & Wales, 85% of all abortions in 2020 (209,917) were chemically induced, the highest number ever, according to Kearney, an increase from 79% in 2019 and 43% in 2010. In Scotland there were 13,815 abortions in 2020, the second highest number ever, and in Northern Ireland there were 664 from March 31, 2020, to October 1, 2020.
Abortion is firmly accepted as normal “healthcare” by the public and the medical profession in the UK, he said, it is not discussed or debated, and is considered a “settled question.” There is also a very powerful and influential abortion industry, hostile media, and totalitarian regulations.
Further, APR has been almost completely unknown there, not advertised, not backed by any of the “mainstream” regulatory or advisory bodies, and not available through NHS.
Kearney and Reilly were the only two doctors officially involved, available 24 hours per day, seven days per week for a population of 67 million.
It was after a few women who had approached Kearney for help reversing their chemical abortion but were unsure and went back to their abortion provider, mentioning they had been to see him, that the pro-abortion complaints to the GMC began.
Not one of Kearney’s APR patients had anything negative to say about his treatment of them - even if they had not gone ahead with reversal treatment - and in fact, numerous testified on his behalf or otherwise spoke highly of him.
Kearney left patients well informed, did not push his views on them, was nonjudgmental, overall considered highly supportive
From the GMC statement:
“We have been able to read those statements and we have recognised the consistent opinion provided in the statements that Dr. Kearney left the women he had treated well informed about the treatment, was not judgemental, did not attempt to push his own views on them, and was overall considered to have been highly supportive.”
Both Kearney’s expert witness and the expert witness for the MPTS, while not proponents of APR, found absolutely nothing wrong with the protocol.
Abortion drugs are free; but they have to pay to save the baby
One of the bogus charges against Kearney was that he was giving money to women. His response to it is illustrative of his overall approach to serving women through APR.
With patients who wished to proceed with reversal but expressed concern over affording the treatment, Kearney would offer to pay for the progesterone, the cost of which is arguably quite low.
He conceded that this could be viewed as out of the ordinary, but if funds were the only thing keeping a woman from proceeding, he did not want that to stand in the way.
“And I felt,” Kearney said, “they’re getting the abortion drugs for free; it would be very unjust that they would then have to pay to save the baby.”
“Kill the baby for free, to then have to pay to save the baby," he added. "If they can't afford to do it … So, I felt as a Christian that was the right thing to do those situations.”
At the time of his AAPLOG address Kearney was planning to make preparations to resume offering APR, estimating a timeframe of a few weeks to do so.
Editor’s note: Heartbeat International manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) and Pregnancy Help News.
