While California women are being sent to emergency rooms in alarming numbers after taking an abortion pill, the state’s Democratic attorney general, Rob Bonta, continues to target nonprofit organizations offering a safe, voluntary alternative for women who simply want a second chance at pregnancy.

Heartbeat International, along with its affiliate, Real Options, offers women information about abortion pill reversal, a treatment using progesterone to counteract the effects of mifepristone, the first drug in the abortion pill process. Progesterone has been safely used for decades to help women sustain healthy pregnancies. Yet Bonta has sued these nonprofit organizations, asking the court to silence their truthful, nonmisleading speech about women’s options to continue their wanted pregnancies after initially taking mifepristone.

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However, when pressed in court, Bonta’s office admitted it was not aware of a single woman who had been harmed by APR. Not one.

Meanwhile, newly compiled research from the Ethics and Public Policy Center revealed a far more urgent concern: the significant, documented risks of the abortion drugs themselves.

According to data collected from an insurance claims database that includes more than 865,000 prescribed mifepristone abortions from 2017 to 2023, nearly 11% of women experienced serious adverse events within 45 days after taking mifepristone, including sepsis, infection, and hemorrhaging. Indeed, despite the “less than 0.5%” complication rate from clinical trials reported on the drug label, the real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone abortions is at least 22 times higher.

If abortion pill reversal — a treatment for which Bonta cannot muster even a single complaint of actual harm — generated a lawsuit from the state, ostensibly due to concerns about women’s health and safety, where is the attorney general when it comes to the thousands of women presenting in ERs with dangerous, even life-threatening complications from abortion drugs? 

The decision to target a nonprofit organization offering a harmless, voluntary treatment, while ignoring the significant complications associated with abortion drugs, raises uncomfortable questions. Why is California’s top law enforcement officer spending taxpayer resources suing nonprofit organizations that are helping women who want to continue their pregnancies?

The science behind abortion pill reversal is straightforward. The abortion pill works by blocking progesterone, a hormone essential to sustaining pregnancy. Administering additional progesterone can potentially reverse this effect if taken soon after the mifepristone, allowing a woman to stop the abortion she no longer wants and carry her pregnancy to term.

Critics argue that more research is needed, and studies are important. But speech about a treatment should not be silenced simply because the full scientific picture is still developing, especially when there is no evidence of harm, the medication involved has been safely used in pregnancy for decades, and women choose it freely after being fully informed.

If Bonta is so concerned about women’s health and safety, has his office taken any action to determine the incidence of California women seeking emergency care for potentially life-threatening complications following the use of the abortion pill? Has he investigated the entities that provided women with the pills that landed them in the ER, on the operating table, or worse? Where are the investigations and lawsuits to redress actual, documented harm to women?

There is a troubling double standard at work.

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A government entity that claims to support “choice” should not be in the business of taking choices away from women, particularly without any evidence of a single person being harmed. Statistics show thousands of women have been able to successfully reverse the effects of mifepristone and have their babies. These are women who had every opportunity to obtain an abortion — indeed, they took mifepristone! But they realized their deep desire to continue their pregnancies and one day hold their babies in their arms. They should not be kept in the dark about this possibility.

Bonta should withdraw this lawsuit and focus on addressing the actual, documented harms facing women today. Californians deserve a legal system that protects women’s health, not one that plays politics with women’s lives and choices.

Danielle M. White, Esq., is general counsel at Heartbeat International.