More to tell about ‘gold standard’ study

Regarding the article, “State becomes haven, advocates target crisis health centers,” printed on Sunday, Feb. 12, and written by Seth Klamann of the Denver Post, I was curious to find out about the gold standard study that was done in 2019 by Dr. Mitchell Creinin, a researcher at University of California, Davis. I had not heard about the abortion pill reversal treatment or this study so I did a little digging.

It turns out that this study was ended months after it was started because of three women hemorrhaging, but two of the three only received placebos instead of the reversal treatment and the one woman who did receive it aborted successfully and was able to self-limit her bleeding.

So it would seem that it was the abortion pill that caused the majority of the hemorrhaging and not the reversal treatment. Also, there were only 10 subjects in the study.

I don’t believe that this study can even be cited as proof that the reversal treatment is not effective. Indeed, of the five women that were in the progesterone treatment group, four had healthy pregnancies two weeks after taking mifepristone — an 80% success rate!

When I tried to look up the study itself, it had been taken down from the Obstetrics and Gynecology Journal.

I’m also not sure why using progesterone would be ineffective or even dangerous. Progesterone itself has been used safely in pregnancies for decades.

It is used in in vitro fertilization, infertility treatments, and high-risk pregnancies (such as those experiencing pre-term labor).

— Connie Baker, Berthoud