Doctors question required advice to women in new Arizona abortion law
A new Arizona law requires doctors to tell patients receiving drug-induced abortions that the procedure may be reversible, though many doctors question whether the advice is supported by scientific study.
The new provision is part of legislation intended to prevent health plans offered through the federal insurance exchange in Arizona from covering most abortions, the New York Times reports.
The advice is based on assertions by San Diego physician George Delgado, who published a December 2012 article about six women given progesterone after they had taken mifepristone, the first of two drugs used to end their pregnancies. The abortion was reversed and the pregnancy was carried to term for four of the six women, the article claimed. Delgado says that, since then, 87 women gave birth to a healthy child, and 75 were still pregnant after taking progesterone to reverse the medical abortion.
But physician Ilana Addis, who leads the Arizona section of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, says Delgado’s study is nothing more than a series of case reports, according to the Times article. Her organization says that when a woman takes the first drug but not the second in medical abortions, pregnancy will continue in 30 to 50 percent of the cases.
