Arizona governor, Doug Ducey, signed a law requiring doctors to notify women of the possibility of preventing pregnancy from abortions. For opponents of abortion in the US, it is of little importance that medical information provided to pregnant women will be unreliable.
In addition, new Arizona law prohibits insurers from covering the expenses of an abortion if the policy is concluded under the legal framework created by the Affordable Care Act. Arizona is America’s 15th state, making abortion access difficult, especially for those on federal insurance plans introduced by President Obama.
On the other hand, the Arizona law will be an exception because it introduces the condition of informed consent, according to which the doctor is obliged to inform the woman about the possibility questioned by most doctors or health care organizations. Claims that pharmacological abortion can be reversed are not supported by the research results, the report of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) addressed to Arizona lawmakers.
Women undergoing pharmacological abortion usually take two types of drugs for several days: the first is mifepristone, which leads to termination of pregnancy in 50-70 percent. cases. The San Diego doctor who opposed abortion said the effects of this medical procedure could be prevented if progesterone was given to the pregnant woman on abortion medication. George Delgado even published an article in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy reporting that four out of six women who had abortions with mifepristone reported pregnancy because they had been given 200 mg of progesterone intramuscularly in advance. Delgado runs the website abortionpillreversal.com, from which he appeals to women that it may not be too late for them yet.
Rather, the American medical community agrees that these statements are deliberately misleading. There are no reliable studies confirming the effectiveness of the therapy to counteract the effects of taking mifepristone, the experts from the ACOG wrote. – The data collected so far on this topic indicate that in the rare cases where a woman changes her mind about an abortion after taking a miscarriage, this person has the same chances of maintaining the pregnancy, regardless of whether she calmly waits for the development of events or reports getting an injection of progesterone.
Meanwhile, the Arizona lawmaker required doctors to inform patients that the effects of drug abortion could be reversed if a woman changed her mind, but time is of the essence. Gynecologists will be directed to the state department of health portal for detailed information on this subject.
A group of Arizona anti-abortion activists behind the new rules posted a photo of Ducey signing the bill on Twitter. “The overwhelming majority of Americans are against paying taxpayers out of pocket for abortion,” the governor noted in a statement. “It’s no different in Arizona, where opposition to publicly funded abortion has a long tradition.”
Nearly 204 residents of the state have signed a contract with an insurer under the legal framework created by the Affordable Care Act, which means all these “patients will receive untrustworthy information,” notes Jodi Liggett, of Planned Parenthood Arizona executives. – We are really concerned about this fact. It is not an exaggeration to say that many of our doctors were shocked by this news. Women in an extremely difficult personal situation will receive information that is not based on any science.
Liggett said her organization is considering an appeal against the bill. “The fight is just beginning,” he says.