You are the first client I personally have worked with in Germany, but we have assisted many women all over Europe,” a US-based nurse told an openDemocracy undercover reporter, posing as a woman who had taken the first, but not the second, pill required to have a medical abortion.
The nurse then emailed this reporter instructions on how to take a controversial ‘treatment’ that claims to be able to ‘reverse’ abortions. Our reporter subsequently received dosage information to take to a local hospital or pharmacy in order to get the medication needed.
This medication is progesterone, a hormone, which is not in itself a dangerous drug. However, its use in high doses in this ‘treatment’ has been called “dangerous to women’s health” and based on “unproven, unethical research” by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
So-called ‘abortion pill reversal’ (APR) treatment was invented by an anti-abortion doctor in California. The only trial into the ‘treatment’ was halted in 2019 after some participants were hospitalised. The trial’s lead researcher said “it wasn’t safe for me to expose women to this treatment.”
And yet openDemocracy has found evidence that it is spreading worldwide – including in countries where abortion has been legal for generations.
Our undercover reporters on four continents – including eight European countries (Armenia, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania, Spain, the UK and Ukraine) – were connected by US activists to local doctors who were willing to offer prescriptions or instructions for this ‘treatment’ by phone or email.