His first study was used to claim ‘abortion pill reversal’ is unsafe. Now, he says it’s ineffective.

Abortionist Mitchell Creinin, who previously disclosed his financial ties to abortion pill manufacturer Danco Laboratories, has published his latest attack on the “Abortion Pill Reversal” (APR) protocol. However, his analysis actually reveals the potential for the abortion pill to fail.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Abortion proponents continuously try to discredit “Abortion Pill Reversal” (the administration of progesterone to outcompete the action of the abortion pill mifepristone). Progesterone has been used for decades in an attempt to prevent threatened miscarriage.
• A new analysis of a retrospective study claims more clinical trials are needed to know the effects of natural or synthetic progesterone on mifepristone taken for abortion, especially based on gestational age.
• However, at the same time, the analysis asserts that the success of administering natural progesterone to reverse the effects of the abortion pill is “likely low.”

THE CONTEXT:

Creinin was the researcher in an earlier abortion pill study which utilized an extremely small sample size of participants and was heavily criticized as being unreliable and even deceptive in its conclusions, which didn’t match up with the study outcomes.

This first study had just 12 participants and was halted early after two women dropped out and three women experienced “severe hemorrhage requiring ambulance transport to hospital.” Two of those three women had received only the abortion pill and a placebo (in other words, no progesterone to counter the effects of the abortion pill), and one received progesterone only.

The study conclusion states, “We could not estimate the efficacy of progesterone for mifepristone antagonization due to safety concerns when mifepristone is administered without subsequent prostaglandin analogue treatment. Patients in early pregnancy who use only mifepristone may be at high risk of significant hemorrhage.”

That study was widely touted by media as proof that “Abortion Pill Reversal” was dangerous to women.

Yet now, years later, Creinin is attempting to show not that APR is dangerous — but that it is essentially ineffective.

THE DETAILS:

Creinin’s most recent “secondary analysis of a retrospective study” reveals that, whether administering the two-drug Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approved combined regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol or the unapproved misoprostol (“MISO only”) protocol, so-called “medical” abortions have the potential to fail.

“Depomedroxyprogesterone acetate impact on mifepristone action during medication abortion” was published by the European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care was co-authored by Creinin and Christy M. Boraas, another abortionist.

The “retrospective study” analysis was implemented to determine whether use of DMPA (a progestogen — a synthetic version of progesterone) after mifepristone would impact abortion pill outcomes.

It’s been known for some time that DMPA can interfere with the action of mifepristone:

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has noted that DMPA may interfere with the action of mifepristone, as Live Action News reported.

• An ACOG Practice Bulletin from 2020 co-authored by Creinin said “Patients who select depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) for contraception should be counseled that administration of DMPA on day 1 of the medication abortion regimen may increase the risk of ongoing pregnancy (119).” Pregnancy Help News noted:

… the ACOG bulletin does categorize the above study and the recommendations based on the outcomes as “Level B” evidence, which is “limited or inconsistent scientific evidence.” However, even with that categorization, it is still suggested that abortion providers tell patients who want the Depo shot the day they take the first abortion pill that it could increase their risk of ongoing pregnancy.

Now, it appears Creinin is attempting to find more consistent evidence. But… he says he still hasn’t, claiming the following:

• The abortion pill regimen itself “clearly has increasing failure rates, [with] ongoing pregnancy as a reason for failure.”
• “Appropriate clinical trials” are needed to know “how any specific progestogen will impact mifepristone.”
• The DMPA/abortion drug studies didn’t track efficacy by gestational age, so there are too many unknowns, and “studies with larger numbers of participants within each gestational duration group” are necessary.
• The later the gestational age, the greater the risk of abortion drugs’ failure, regardless of whether patients got DMPA.
• “The differences in outcomes between patients” receiving or not receiving DMPA with mifepristone were “notable although not statistically significant.”

The authors disputed APR’s “efficacy rates of 50% for progesterone therapy started some time after mifepristone administration,” claiming the “effect is only 25% and even lower for pregnancies ≤49days” because of the abortion pill’s high rate of failure.

And as noted above, Creinin’s first attempt at a “clinical trial” was extremely unreliable.

Other significant assertions from the authors centered around use of “Misoprostol-alone” abortions:

• The unapproved one-drug regimen of “Misoprostol-alone” is even less effective at killing preborn babies than the two-drug regimen approved by the FDA, though the abortion industry has promoted it.
• The authors said this method “is about 74.0% effective with a single misoprostol buccal dose,” but “when considering all possible data, the effectiveness likely falls within a range of 68.7– 76.2%” depending on “misoprostol route, … repeat dosing… and by gestational duration.”

“Using the misoprostol-alone data, we estimate the impact of DMPA on mifepristone when used simultaneously in the study cohort. We assumed that any ongoing pregnancy occurring after combined mifepristone-misoprostol use would have been continuing with misoprostol-alone use holding misoprostol dose and route of administration steady,” the study claimed.

The authors, though uncertain about much of their analysis, do seem to have unsurprisingly decided on one thing:

… When considering whether the effects of DMPA on mifepristone support any concept of abortion pill reversal, we estimated that DMPA, when administered simultaneously with mifepristone, increases ongoing pregnancy rates by only an estimated 25% of the predicted effect it would have if it prevented all actions of mifepristone.

Thus, the likelihood that administering progesterone orally [‘abortion pill reversal’] sometime after mifepristone (e.g. 24h or more) will have any substantial effect on mifepristone clinical action is likely low.

The abortion pill regimen has only been approved by the FDA up to 10 weeks (70 days) of gestation. Yet, Creinin and his Planned Parenthood co-author do not appear concerned that abortion pills are used well past that gestational marker, even into the third trimester, nor have they shown concern over how Big Abortion is flouting FDA safety requirements for the drug.

COMMENTARY:

Christa Brown, BSN, RN, LAS — Heartbeat International’s Senior Director of Medical Impact — told Live Action News that it’s not just the pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) which has stated that DMPA (or depo provera, a progestin contraception) affects the efficacy of mifepristone.

“In the approval package for mifepristone to the FDA, there is clear evidence that mifepristone is antagonized by progesterone,” Brown said. “Animal and human studies have confirmed this. Creinin… continues to contradict himself. His previous small study gave the highest success rate of any abortion pill reversal study and yet he continues to deny reversal is possible.”

Board-certified OB/GYN Dr. Ingrid Skop told Live Action News:

Mitchell Creinin is intent on discrediting APR to deny women a choice to try to save their unborn child when they regret taking mifepristone. In this study, he focuses on an apples-to-oranges comparison by using a synthetic progestogen, depo-provera, to estimate the benefit that natural progesterone would have in countering the effects of mifepristone.

She added, “As a clinician who provides progesterone in this circumstance, I have seen the lives of babies saved when the anti-hormonal effect of mifepristone is counteracted by the pro-pregnancy effect of natural progesterone.”

Andrea Trudden, VP of Communications & Marketing at HBI, pointed out the “stark double standard” of the abortion industry, telling Live Action News:

Misoprostol is not FDA-approved for use as a standalone abortion drug, yet it’s being pushed by the abortion lobby with increasing urgency. Meanwhile, progesterone—a naturally occurring hormone safely used for decades to support early pregnancy—is met with criticism when offered to women seeking to reverse the effects of mifepristone. It’s troubling to see such a stark double standard: opposition to saving a life with progesterone, but no hesitation to end one using misoprostol.

Dr. Creinin continues to underscore what the FDA’s REMS once required: women need real medical oversight when considering the abortion pill.

She added that Creinin’s work “consistently shows that women should have an ultrasound to identify how far along she is before considering this option and she should have follow up visits to confirm completion.”

According to Brown, “Mitchell Creinin seemingly refuses to believe that women regret their abortion decisions and that regret often occurs quickly. To want to control this pregnancy choice and not permit them to reverse mifepristone is cruel. To end the lives of their innocent children for studies to prove abortion ideologies is unethical.”

THE BACKSTORY:

Live Action News previously documented Creinin’s conflicts of interest, noting that, by his own admission, he receives “compensation” from Danco as a consultant, receives consulting fees, and has received an honorarium from the abortion pill’s manufacturer. Creinin also provides “third-party telephone consults” for Danco.

Creinin, a professor at the University of California Davis, is also the Director of the Complex Family Planning Fellowship, an abortion training program. Fellows of the Fellowship are, according to the pro-abortion Society of Family Planning (SFP), “uniquely suited to establish new Ryan Residency Training Programs” — which have already trained thousands of abortionists. The UC system has been heavily funded by the Buffett Foundation, which invested in the abortion pill early on.

Creinin has ties to Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Federation, and he was an early prescriber of the drugs, claiming to have personally “developed the methotrexate abortion.”

 

His study was approved by the University of Minnesota Institutional Review Board, a school with a Ryan Residency and Complex in Family Planning abortion training program on site, led by co-author Boraas.

Boraas, an admitted abortionist who boasts membership with SFP, was not only an associate medical director of Planned Parenthood North Central States (PPNCS) but also a “physician” at Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania and Whole Woman’s Health abortion chain, according to her LinkedIn Page. In addition, her CV reveals she practiced at Planned Parenthood Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, St. Paul, MN., and chairs the Minnesota Medical Association’s Abortion Policy Work Group.

Boraas holds memberships with Physicians for Reproductive Health, the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, and the Consortium of Abortion Providers Abortion Equity Cohort. She is currently working with Gynuity Health Projects (funded by abortion pill investor the Packard Foundation) on a clinical trial “to create and pilot-test an asynchronous medication abortion provision service.”

 

“The European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care is the official journal of the European Society of Contraception and Reproductive Health [ESC],” the group’s website claims. It partners with the International Federation of Professional Abortion and Contraception Associates.

In 2020, 2021, and 2022, ESC was funded by the French pharmaceutical company Exelgyn, which describes itself as an “international actor in medical abortion” and sells Mifegyne. In 2021, ESC received funds from DKT, a worldwide abortion pill marketer. In addition, Gedeon Richter and Organon, which have both granted Creinin speaking honoraria, funded ESC in 2021 and 2023, with Gedeon Richter also funding ESC in 2022.