Women in Colorado have won a major court victory upholding their right to choose—not to have an abortion.
In October, a federal judge in Denver struck down as unconstitutional a Colorado statute, passed only in April 2023, that would have subjected doctors and nurses to losing their licenses for “unprofessional conduct” if they prescribed or administered drugs to try to reverse the effects of the abortion pill on women who changed their minds about having an abortion. U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico ruled on Oct. 21 that the law violated First Amendment guarantees of free speech and freedom to practice one’s religion.
The state had 30 days to file a notice that it would appeal Judge Domenico’s preliminary injunction barring enforcement of the law—and it chose not to do so. That means that the underlying lawsuit challenging the statute, brought by two Catholic nurses who operate a pro-life obstetrics practice in Colorado, remains technically alive pending a full trial, but the statute itself is effectively dead, at least until a trial judge decides otherwise sometime down the road.
“Colorado’s decision not to appeal means that expecting mothers in Colorado can continue to receive help in reversing the effects of the first abortion pill and be protected from the state’s unscientific, harmful law,” Laura Wolk Slavis, an attorney with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents the nurses’ Bella Health and Wellness Clinic, said in an emailed statement.
The Colorado lawsuit and the statute behind it are classic examples of the hypocrisy of activists who claim to be “pro-choice” but actually want to push abortion even onto the unwilling.
About a decade ago, a California physician, George Delgado, discovered that administering repeated doses of progesterone could potentially reverse a “medication abortion” (the nomenclature for the abortion pill) if done early enough. Progesterone is a naturally occurring hormone produced early in pregnancy that thickens the uterine wall, nourishing the embryo. Doctors have been prescribing extra progesterone for decades to women at risk for early miscarriage, with the approval of medical authorities.
Medication abortion, which now accounts for about half of U.S. abortions, actually involves two pills. The first is mifepristone, which deprives the body from producing progesterone naturally, essentially starving the embryo. But because mifepristone alone isn’t enough to cause an abortion in about half the cases, the woman takes a second pill, misoprostol, two days later, which causes contractions to expel the nascent life. If a woman who has taken the first pill but not the second changes her mind and acts quickly, she can, in many cases, save her pregnancy and give birth to a healthy baby, Dr. Delgado discovered.
Hence, the Colorado law, described by one supporter as attempting “to regulate ... pseudoscience practices” on the part of pro-life medical providers.
Paul M. Jonna, a San Diego lawyer affiliated with the Thomas More Society, which is defending the two crisis-pregnancy networks, maintains that Mr. Bonta’s lawsuit is a blatant effort to censor legitimate information about abortion alternatives, a clear violation of the First Amendment. Even worse, Mr. Jonna said in a phone interview: “Is it really the role of a judge to decide which medical study is more compelling than another? It’s not the role of a judge to sift through studies and make decisions based on that.
“[Abortion-rights activists] don’t want to believe that some women don’t really want to have abortions. They want to say that it’s all about choice—except when it comes to some women deciding to keep their baby.”
