A federal judge has blocked an Indiana law requiring doctors to inform women undergoing drug-induced abortions about a treatment for stopping those abortions, the Associated Press reported.
U.S. District Judge James Patrick Hanlon issued an injunction on the law on Wednesday shortly before it was set to take effect. The injunction will allow a suit seeking to overturn the law to make its way through the court system. Pro-abortion groups argued in the suit that the bill would confuse patients while pushing a treatment “wholly unsupported by reliable scientific evidence.”
The law would mandate that women who take the first of two abortion-inducing pills are informed by doctors of medication that would halt the procedure, should they change their minds. Dr. Christina Francis, chairwoman of the board of the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, argued in March that it would be “cruel” not to inform women of the potential to halt an abortion.
“They are not told it’s 100%, they’re told that it’s about a 70% chance that they could save their child,” Francis said at the time.
Dr. Caroline Rouse, assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at the Indiana University School of Medicine, told the Indiana Senate that the procedure is potentially “dangerous.”
“Patients trust me, the physician, to provide accurate information in order to help them make the best medical decision,” Rouse said. “So-called abortion reversal does not have science behind it. It is a dangerous and potentially life-threatening treatment without sound scientific evidence and counseling my patients about it is unethical.”
Dr. George Delgado of San Diego, Ca., who created the “abortion reversal” treatment, testified at a June 21 hearing that the treatment is safe. Delgado said he had supervised “50 to 75 successful reversals.”