George Delgado, M.D.

(Ignatius Press, 2025, soft cover, 254 pp., $18.95 and e-book, $12.32)

Reviewed by John M. Grondelski, Ph.D.

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A growing number of abortions worldwide are pharmaceutically rather than surgically induced. Various reasons account for this trend. Many abortions occur in the first trimester, and “medication abortions” (a favored Guttmacher Institute term) can be performed at least through the seventh week of pregnancy. (Heartbeat can be detected at six.) American culture also tends to think a “pill” can fix almost everything, including sexually. There’s a reason the anovulant contraceptive is known as “the Pill.” The “abortion pill” hopes to glom onto the popularity of the “Pill” while further blurring the line be-tween contraception and abortifacients. “I could take a few pills and pretend this had never happened” (p. 115).

Chemically induced abortions also lower abortionists’ overhead: Clinics can become dispensaries, with medical “exams,” “counseling” by teleconference, and automated or mail distribution of drugs that make abortion largely a “do-it-yourself” procedure. Pro-abortionists see in the latter a way to evade restrictions adopted post-Dobbs by various states.

The “abortion pill” is actually two drugs—mifepristone and misoprostol—initially introduced in the United States by an arguably political decision of the Clinton Food and Drug Administration, which bypassed its usual protocols. Mifepristone, the first drug, blocks the hormone progesterone. Progesterone is responsible for two things: promoting solid and continuing implantation of the embryo/fetus to the uterus and suppressing the action of prostaglandins, which cause uterine contractions. Firm implantation is essential to the unborn child’s survival by allowing exchange of nutrients, oxygen, and waste removal. The reason for stopping the uterus from contracting prior to delivery is self-evident. Mifepristone essentially “undoes” implantation, depriving the developing child of nutrition. With mifepristone having launched the child’s death, misoprostol (taken 24-48 hours later) finishes the job by inducing contractions, by which the woman (usually alone) delivers her dead baby as well as the developed uterine contents that supported it. The “abortion pill” essentially induces miscarriage. The question is: Once induced, can that miscarriage process be stopped?

Dr. George Delgado has shown it can. His book Abortion Pill Reversal: A Second Chance at Choice explains how, as well as how we got here.

The “how” is relatively simple. If mifepristone blocks the action of progesterone, by which the body naturally and normally supports a pregnancy, then one should be able to counteract mifepristone’s blockage by rapidly increasing a mother’s progesterone levels so that mifepristone is ineffective. The key is time: As long as additional progesterone is supplied and misoprostol is not taken, Delgado has shown such treatment effectively stops the medication abortion at least 65-80% of the time.

One would think this would be a recognized benefit, given that abortion is defended as a matter of “choice.” One would be wrong. The only legitimate choice for the “choice” crowd is abortion.

George Delgado, a physician, medical director, and researcher, is one of the pioneers of abortion pill reversal therapy, and his book is a history of that movement. “History” and “movement” are special descriptions. This book is not a boring “history” of the medical treatment but a clear and engaging documentation of how abortion pill reversal came about and spread. It originated with a pregnant woman’s call for help to Dr. Delgado after taking mifepristone and his quickly putting 2 + 2 together: If increased progesterone dosages had been successfully used for decades to prevent natural miscarriage, they might work against mifepristone, too. They did, and Dr. Delgado is author of several peer-reviewed articles documenting this treatment. It’s a “movement” because established voices in “mainstream medicine,” ideo-logically committed to abortion, were intent from the start on marginalizing abortion pill reversal and keeping it out of the “standard medical care” tool-kit. Abortion pill reversal spread because Dr. Delgado not only developed the medical protocol but started a national hotline and built a network of physicians ready to help women wanting to stop the medication abortion process they had begun.

The book is, therefore, a grab bag of information that traces the history of abortion pill reversal efforts from 2008–2024. It includes an explanation of how the abortion pill and reversal procedures work; the research that backs Delgado’s procedures; the spread of the procedures worldwide; and how pro-abortion ideologues and their allies in government have sought, in the name of “science,” to stifle the abortion pill reversal procedure’s spread. A separate part of the book includes personal testimonies from Dr. Delgado, peer colleagues, nurses involved in his abortion pill reversal hotline, and women actually helped by the procedure, speaking of their experiences. Some common threads there include the ambivalence women have about undergoing medication abortion; their despair that abortion might be their immediate “least bad choice”; their frequent recoiling from their “choice” almost as soon as they have swallowed the pill; the race against time to save their babies; and their satisfaction in the end at having undergone abortion pill reversal.

An honest medical establishment would, at the very least, admit that some women may decide not to “go through” with a medication abortion and have the alternative to back out. This fact contradicts abortion orthodoxy, which claims post-abortion regret and trauma are but figments of prolifers’ imaginations. That abortion pill reversal has not yet been acknowledged as standard medical care says much about the ideological grip pro-abortionists have on that establishment. The procedure continues to be slandered by dis-information, from its alleged ineffectiveness when regulatory bodies block research to the commonplace claim by abortion clinics that one must “finish” the medication abortion regime or risk fetal deformity, even though even the FDA acknowledges that mifepristone does not have teratogenic—deformity-inducing—effects. This shows why Delgado et al. have had to show decades-long tenacity. America’s experience with COVID sheds some light on Delgado’s experience: One reason many people are suspicious of “public health” claims—even those they probably shouldn’t doubt—is because a lot of things were proclaimed and imposed in the name of “believing in science” that in retrospect represented blind if not misplaced faith. Happily, modern communications offer ways of circumventing ideological groupthink, even when declaimed by “authorities” in white lab coats.

The book is thorough and detailed, but very accessible. Delgado makes medical and research issues understandable, while affording the reader a thorough grounding in how abortion pill reversal originated and grew and where it seems headed. The author’s style and pace keep the reader engaged and wanting more.

One can hope that abortion pill reversal procedures become admitted standard medical practice, though one should have no illusion that will happen without a fight. Still, the writing is on the wall: At least 15 states now require discussion of abortion pill reversal as part of informed consent requirements for medication abortions, while to date only one—Colorado—has tried to ban it (and been stopped, at least partially, in federal court).

As Delgado shows, abortion pill referral sits at a unique place in medical care. On the one hand, because of the time factor for counteracting mifepristone, it is emergency care. On the other, progesterone as an inhibitor to mis-carriage is so standard it can be general practitioner, and not just OB-GYN, care.

For pro-abortionists, chemically induced abortion is a talisman by which they hope to ground abortion as an uncontroversial “medical procedure” that can evade hostile state restriction while opening a whole new market. For prolifers, abortion pill reversal may be our new barricade. Delgado’s book is a go-to reference about this new procedure that belongs in every prolifer’s and physician’s library.

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Original Bio:

—John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey. All views are his own.