The pioneer behind the life-saving abortion pill reversal protocol, Dr. George Delgado, has helped save thousands of lives. Recently, he sat down with Live Action founder and president Lila Rose for an exclusive interview about his work.
In 2012, Delgado published an article in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy, along with his colleague Mary Davenport, following the progress of seven women. That was followed up with peer-reviewed research conducted in 2018 and published in Issues in Law and Medicine. This study followed 754 patients, and found a 68% success rate of abortion pill reversal — meaning women took progesterone to counteract the effects of mifepristone. And it all started when the abortion pill regimen took off.
“It was being touted as this holy grail,” Delgado recalled of the abortion pill regimen. “It was a way for a woman to independently conduct her own abortion, and that it would be safer, more private, and more acceptable to them.”
Delgado was researching how mifepristone worked when he was contacted asking for help for a woman in Texas who had taken the abortion pill and changed her mind.
“What a question that is to present to me, in a busy afternoon of seeing patients!” he chuckled, and added that he took some time to think the issue over. “I think, really, about the information I had studying mifepristone early on, as well as the information I had about using progesterone in pregnancy, for women with low progesterone levels, and might be miscarrying, to save their pregnancies. The Holy Spirit put those two together, and I got this idea: well, this is kind of like a low-progesterone situation. It’s artificially induced, of course, but perhaps we could give supplemental progesterone to override the mifepristone.”
He found a physician in Texas with whom he was familiar, and explained his idea to her. The physician treated the woman with Delgado’s progesterone protocol, and the baby survived. Abortion pill reversal took off from there, but it could only happen in certain circumstances — it had to be taken within 72 hours of mifepristone being ingested, and before misoprostol, which induces contractions, is taken. “Most women get started within 24 hours,” Delgado said. “We think the sooner, the better.”
Since then, as thousands of babies have been saved with Delgado’s abortion pill reversal, he — and his protocol — has come under attack, which he says are lies.
“They’re lying that there’s a risk of birth defects, when there isn’t; they’re lying that it’s not effective,” he said. “But the lies go deeper, because part of medical treatment is something we call informed consent. And they’re not giving good informed consent. Informed consent means the patient makes the decision – in this case, to go forward with a chemical abortion – based on good information given by the abortion center. They’re not following that the way physicians and clinics should.”
Delgado said in the future, he hopes to not only perfect his current protocol, but expand it to address other abortion drugs, like misoprostol and methotrexate. And he has a message he hopes women will take to heart.
“We never judge you. We love you. And we want to be there to support you,” he said. “We want to show you that abortion is not the only way out of your situation.”
