Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

  • Arizona Republican Don Shooter has been expelled from the state Legislature over years of sexually harassing women. Good riddance to bad rubbish. (AZ Central)
  • It’s so nice to be able to report that the useless and arbitrary 20-week abortion ban being peddled by Republicans failed in the Senate! Republicans run every branch of government but, embarrassingly, continue to lose their battles. (Politico)
  • In the post-#MeToo era, it is crucial that children learn not just about their bodies and hormones, but about safety, consent, and healthy relationships. These are all topics that should be part of a compassionate, fully comprehensive sexual education program for all children. (Chicago Tribune)
  • The Virginia Senate agrees: They just passed legislation to require high schools in Virginia to include consent in their curriculum. (The Breeze)
  • Good news: A federal district court on Monday blocked a Texas measure that would require health care providers to bury or cremate embryonic or fetal tissue from abortions, miscarriage, or treatment for ectopic pregnancy. (Rewire)
  • Bad news: STD cases among people 55 and older are on the rise here in Arizona. (Fox 10)
  • If you’re relying on an app for birth control, please read this! (Self)
  • There is a growing underground movement of people across America who have taught themselves to help women terminate pregnancies without a doctor. How sad that this is even necessary 45 years after Roe v. Wade. Is this what we want for women? For them to have to go “underground” and risk life and limb in order to have access to a legal medical procedure? Do we realize that is what we’re fostering in this country by making it impossible for women to end unwanted pregnancies? This breaks my heart. (Mother Jones)
  • Three civil rights organizations have filed a lawsuit against Education Secretary Betsy DeVos for rolling back protections for students who report sexual assault. (Huff Po)
  • A question any thinking person should be asking: Why does it cost $32,093 just to give birth in America? (Guardian)
  • Could Ireland, one of the most anti-abortion countries in Europe, be close to decriminalizing abortion? (NY Times)
  • The Trump administration officials in charge of the Office of Refugee Resettlement were so set upon forcing an undocumented teen to give birth against her will, they worked themselves into a crazed lather contemplating ways to “reverse” the termination of her pregnancy, which was already in progress. (Vice)
  • Could a toxic plant really be the precursor to an effective male birth control option? (Gizmodo)
  • Get a load of this malarkey: A recent focus group on abortion views shows anti-abortion respondents seem to believe that men understand abortion better than women and that women who have abortions are unintelligent and irresponsible. When asked whether men whose partner was having an abortion understood that it was ending a potential life, 51 percent of abortion opponents said yes. But when asked if women getting abortions understood the procedure, only 36 percent of anti-choicers agreed that a woman knows what she is doing. Abortion foes were also more likely to say they were more comfortable when women were housewives instead of seeking careers.

    Always remember: This is what people who don’t want women to control their bodies and lives think of us. They hold the sincere belief that we lack basic intelligence and the ability to think critically. They think we are inferior to men and that we have no value outside of some man’s kitchen. Gag me. (Salon)

Telling the Truth About Abortion Politics

Sens. Yee and Barto asked. We answered. It’s Our Turn to share the truth behind abortion politics. We have submitted the following op-ed to the Arizona Republic, but they have not (yet?) published it.

Thank You PP croppedAs a medical professional, I am dismayed at the recent “Our Turn” published in the Arizona Republic titled, “Make doctors tell the truth on abortion drug.” I would like to do just that — tell the truth and correct the record, because the opinion by legislators Barto and Yee was laden with revisionist history, misstatements of legal fact, and most important, non-medical junk science.

Doctors practice up-to-date, evidence-based medicine. I appreciate lawmakers repealing their intrusive foray into the practice of medicine, SB 1324. This law attempted to mandate how doctors dispense abortion medication according to an outdated, 16-year-old protocol contained in the original drug label. SB 1324 was an attempt to re-start a legal case that Arizona was losing. Despite the FDA’s update of the drug label to reflect current medical practice, policymakers and the governor stubbornly insisted on enacting SB 1324. Why, I cannot imagine. The repeal of this legislation was certainly welcome.

Real doctors reject junk science. More disturbing than the FDA label issue is Sens. Yee and Barto’s assertion that “at least 170 healthy babies have been born when medication abortions were reversed.” There is no scientific support for this assertion, just as there is no peer-reviewed medical evidence for the whole notion of “abortion reversal.” A handful of doctors with a moral agenda have attempted to use progesterone to “stop” a medication abortion. However, there is nothing in the literature to justify this practice, save for one report of six informal clinical anecdotes. No significant sample size, no control group, no oversight, no peer review. Regardless, last year these same legislators passed SB 1318, violating physicians’ and patients’ constitutional rights by forcing physicians to inform their patients that it is possible to reverse a medication abortion, which is untrue. Continue reading

The Imaginarium of Doctor Delgado: The Make-Believe Medicine Behind SB 1318

pillDr. George Delgado, a gynecologist based in San Diego, is probably not likely to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine any time soon — or ever. Delgado’s dubious medical claims have been one of the driving forces behind a piece of legislation, Arizona Senate Bill 1318, that pushes what physician and state Rep. Randall Friese calls “fringe medicine.”

Delgado runs a website called Abortion Pill Reversal, offering 24-hour medical advice to women who have taken the abortion drug mifepristone and regret their decision. “There is an effective process for reversing the abortion pill, called ABORTION PILL REVERSAL, so call today!” the website cheers. Most people have probably never heard that a medication abortion — that is, an abortion performed by administering two pills — can be reversed. If this medical breakthrough sounds new, it’s because it doesn’t exist — at least not within any kind of evidence-based, established medical practice.


So-called abortion reversal is untested for safety or effectiveness.


Unsafe abortions have always been the consequence of the anti-abortion movement. Now unsafe abortion reversals can likely be added to that, thanks to the procedure Delgado has performed and promoted — in spite of scant evidence of its safety and effectiveness. In the two-step process of a medication abortion, a provider first administers a dose of mifepristone and then follows it with a dose of misoprostol. Delgado claims he can intervene in a medication abortion so that the patient’s pregnancy can continue. If patients change their minds after the first step, Delgado claims, they can counteract the initial drug with a dose of progesterone.

For published medical literature, Delgado can claim a 2012 article he co-wrote in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy. The article describes six abortion reversal patients, four of whom, he claims, remained pregnant. Though published in a legitimate medical journal, Delgado’s findings were from a small sample of patients, none of whom were compared in a controlled study to patients who did not undergo the progesterone treatment. Moreover, not everything that’s published in medical journals is well received by the medical community. Dr. David A. Grimes, a physician formerly with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, calls the article “an incompletely documented collection of anecdotes.” Continue reading

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

  • ribbonsThe imbeciles in the state of Kentucky are trying to say that a ban on gay marriage isn’t discriminatory because it bars both gay and straight people from same-sex unions. To me, this is akin to saying you’re going to ban breastfeeding in public places, but you’re going to ban both men and women from breastfeeding, and thus, it’s not discrimination against women! See, magical thinking! No logic necessary!! (ABC News)
  • Arizona Republicans are such big fans of lying that they’ve passed a law that requires doctors to lie to women about abortions being reversible. (The Guardian)
  • Tampons may one day help detect endometrial cancer. (Smithsonian Mag)
  • Why settle for No. 3 when you can strive for No. 1? Apparently, Texas isn’t satisfied having *only* the third highest HIV infection rate in the country, so they’ve cut funding for HIV screenings in favor of abstinence education. Makes all the sense in the world, doesn’t it? #CompassionateConservatism (RH Reality Check)
  • Looks like the fate of Texas will soon be very similar to that of Scott County, Indiana. Planned Parenthood was the county’s sole provider of HIV testing, but the state cut funding and several clinics were forced to close. They’re now suffering an HIV outbreak that its governor has called “an epidemic.” (HuffPo)
  • Speaking of Indiana, their ”religious freedom” bill caused a huge ruckus this week. But instead of just repealing the stupid thing, they’ve “revised it” to ban businesses from denying services to people on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. (IndyStar)
  • Wow, so Indiana just keeps on delivering the worst of the worst, don’t they? Purvi Patel has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for feticide and “neglect of a dependent” for having a miscarriage that may have been caused by an abortion pill. She’s not the first woman to face such charges, and these predatory, intrusive laws pretty much guarantee she won’t be the last. (MSNBC)
  • We often hear about what miscarriages cost women emotionally, but what about the financial cost? It’s pretty steep. One woman’s miscarriage cost her tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills. (Slate)
  • Maryland has opened an abortion clinic that’s being compared to a “spa.” Naturally, women being able to receive kindness and comfort while undergoing a completely legal medical procedure has some people outraged. (WaPo)
  • The Navajo Nation is being referred to as a “condom desert.” (Al Jazeera America)
  • Hard to express how heartbreaking a read this last piece is — women in abusive relationships suffer in ways many people just can’t fully grasp. They are more likely to contract HIV and less likely to use birth control. And when they do use birth control, it often has to be done via “secret” methods. (Jezebel)

Pro-Choice Friday News Rundown

  • notorious-rbgA force to be reckoned with for sure … RBG is definitely the woman of the hour these days. (Slate Double X)
  • Rabidly conservative, forced-birth advocate, and noted homophobe Cathi Herrod continues to wreak havoc on the state of Arizona with SB 1318. (Phoenix New Times)
  • And somehow, SB 1318 has been amended to be even more sucktacular. Ever heard of “reversing” a medication abortion? No one with medical knowledge has, but Repubs just don’t care! (RH Reality Check)
  • AZ state Rep. Victoria Steele bravely came forward as a survivor of sexual assault in order to fight SB 1318. To say we salute her and are grateful for her advocacy would be a huge understatement. (Tucson Weekly)
  • You’d think a bill helping to combat the evil that is human sex trafficking would be a cut-and-dry piece of legislation that both parties could get behind, right? Well, when Republicans are in charge of the legislation, you can bet anti-abortion tomfoolery will ensue. Goal? Make life harder for sex trafficking victims who get pregnant and prefer not to have their rapists’ babies. (HuffPo)
  • And Jon Stewart (rightfully) has some choice words for the Dems who supported the bill without reading it. (The Daily Show)
  • Oh look, another Republican weasel (Nebraska state Rep. Justin Harris) who wants to all but ensure that rape victims end up giving birth against their will. And not just any rape victims … underage ones. (RH Reality Check)
  • Whoa. Canada can teach us a thing or two about age-appropriate, comprehensive sex education! (HuffPo Canada)