The walls of George Delgado’s Family Health Care Clinic in California are plastered with stock images of women looking sad. Some of them are crying. Others just appear miserable.
One of those sad-looking women is accompanied by the text, “I wish I never did it”. Another reads, “I wish I could go back and change things.”
Delgado is a pro-life gynecologist.
And the women on his walls are meant to provide a glimpse into what life looks like for women who choose to have an abortion.
WATCH: Women share what it was like having abortions before they were legal. Post continues below.
Delgado’s message, however, doesn’t stop there.
His website ‘Abortion Pill Reversal’ (which Mamamia has chosen not to link to in order to prevent the spread of irresponsible health information) asks in imposing capital letters: “REGRET TAKING THE ABORTION PILL?”
A woman covers her face in the background.
“IT MAY NOT BE TOO LATE TO SAVE YOUR PREGNANCY,” his site reads, encouraging users to call their 24/7 hotline.
The site then boasts eight ‘success’ stories about women who were filled with “regret and guilt” and then learned a reversal process was possible.
Top Comments
In the interests of choice, women should absolutely be informed that if they change their mind after taking the first pill that there is a possibility that their pregnancy can continue. Unfortunately women who have expressed a change of mind after taking the first pill are sometimes being told by the abortion provider that they must proceed with the abortion. They are quite incorrectly told that if they do not proceed that their baby will be born with birth defects.
There is no evidence whatsoever of congenital abnormalities from mifepristone.
I don't understand why Mamamia is against abortion pill reversal... allowing a woman to freely choose to keep a pregnancy she didn't really want to terminate would be a pro-choice position. Trying to save her pregnancy is her choice.
I personally know two people who successfully used this. One took the first abortion pill last October and was able to be helped by that Abortion Pill Reversal organisation to get progesterone to save her pregnancy. She is now 34 weeks.
She said she went to the Emergency Department of her local hospital but the OBGyn on-call refused to prescribe progesterone for her. She then Googled and found the abortion pill reversal website and they were able to put her in touch with a local doctor who prescribed it to her. (She lives in America.)
The other person took the first abortion pill in January this year. She was helped with progesterone through her hospital and saved her pregnancy. She is now 21 weeks. (She lived in Canada at the time.)
It’s probably the way that its marketed towards women that is the issue - women shouldn’t feel shamed about the decisions they make in regards to their own bodies, but that’s not to say it’s not a vulnerable time for them, and these kinds of organisations pick up on that and often do more harm than good.
In my experience - I don’t regret my abortion for one minute, and as this article correctly states, neither do most women.