A Patient is a Person... No Matter How SMall
Dr. William Lile is a pro-life OB/GYN who is licensed to practice in Florida and in Alabama. In 1999 he took over a practice that was also the largest provider of abortion services in Pensacola. All abortion services and abortion referrals were stopped on the first day. The abortionist retired and left the country. The abortion equipment is now used to demonstrate the brutality of abortions performed in all 3 trimesters. Today, there is no one offering abortions in the Florida panhandle and Dr. Lile uses his experience and information about modern obstetrics to demonstrate the life and personhood of the unborn. For Dr. Lile, all unborn children are treated as patients, no matter how small.
Dr. Lile is also one of more than 700 physicians across the country who is providing the Abortion Pill Reversal procedure, and he serves on the medical advisory board for Heartbeat International and the Abortion Pill Reversal Network, which to date has seen more than 750 successful reversal of the abortion pill in the United States. Dr. Lile explained to the crowd, “Opiate addiction is a major problem in the United States. The medical community understands that if someone misuses an opiate and experiences an overdose, we can administer a medicine like Narcan to reverse many of those overdoses and save the patient’s life. Abortion pill reversal is no different – if a woman takes the first dose of the abortion pill regimen and realizes she has made a mistake, we can often administer a drug commonly used in obstetric care to reverse the abortion and save the unborn patient’s life.” Dr. Lile shared that his practice in Florida just provided its sixth successful abortion pill reversal of 2019.
The procedure works because the abortion pill is a combination of two medicines. The first blocks a pregnant woman’s body from producing progesterone, which causes the death of her unborn child. A second medicine often used causes her body to expel the then-deceased child. The mechanism of the Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) is that it provides additional progesterone to a woman, counteracting the progesterone-blocking mechanism. It can be taken up to 72 hours after administering the abortion pill, but is most successful when taken in the first 24 hours. Progesterone is commonly used in obstetrical care to support healthy pregnancies, especially in women at risk of miscarriage.
In recent years, the percentage of local women choosing non-surgical methods of abortion has skyrocketed from about 3 percent to more than 30% locally, and GCRTL has seen first-hand women who walked out of the abortion clinic, experienced immediate regret, and wanted to reverse the process. Several years ago, a group of Seminarians were praying outside of Founder’s, and they witnessed a woman who came out and attempted to induce vomiting, crying out ‘what did I just do? What did I just do?’ We were just starting to hear about the APR process then, but our team was not yet familiar with it. Since then, we have been very invested in making sure that women, our volunteers, and the greater community know about Abortion Pill Reversal.
Legislation pending in the Ohio General Assembly would require that Ohio’s abortion informed consent law be updated to include information about the availability of abortion pill reversal. Not surprisingly, the effort has been decried by abortion advocates and the media, calling it “junk science” or an unnecessary effort to increase abortion stigma.
It seems surprising that advocates for so-called ‘choice’ would oppose expanding the options for a woman who changed her mind about her abortion. They are asserting, basically, that a woman does not have the right to information that, if she chooses, would allow her to withdraw consent from an abortion procedure. The more than 750 babies who have been born following APR are the best witnesses to the efficacy of the process. Dr. Lile added, “we are currently seeing success rates in the hundreds, and soon the thousands and the tens of thousands, and as more and more women are electing to have a chemical (non-surgical) abortion, it is vital that we continue this work from both the perspective of saving lives and also confirming the science involved.”
Greater Columbus Right to Life provides abortion pill reversal information and referrals to the national APR hotline, which is based here in Columbus out of the offices of Heartbeat International, to each client that their team of volunteers interacts with. In the last year, the group has provided information to more than 1000 women at the clinic as part of their ministry work. Proceeds from the evening’s fundraiser will support their programs such as sidewalk ministry, education – including an upcoming APR informational series, and other projects – such as the advanced medical directives project.
If you were not able to attend the fundraiser but would like to make a donation to support their work, you can visit www.gcrtl.org/gift.
To learn more about Abortion Pill Reversal, visit: www.abortionpillreversal.com.