ASHLAND, Nebraska (Pregnancy Help News) — A pioneer of the life-saving Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) protocol encouraged a pro-life gathering to proclaim the truth about the sanctity of human life, especially for women in crisis. It’s important to speak the truth about life and APR in our respective areas of influence, Dr. George Delgado said, so that women can have a second chance at choice.
Delgado addressed the LIFE Runners annual banquet on March 22 at the Strategic Air Command Museum in Ashland, Nebraska. Delgado, a family practice physician in California, founded the first Abortion Pill Reversal network and also the Steno Institute, which performs pro-life research.
Because of the initial APR network’s success and growth, Delgado partnered in 2018 with Heartbeat International, the largest network of pregnancy help organizations both in the U.S. and internationally, for Heartbeat to assume operation of what became the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN), a network of more than 1,400 healthcare professionals, pregnancy centers and hospitals, for which Delgado remains both a provider and an advisor.
Delgado’s appearance for LIFE Runners came just days before the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine case with implications for access to chemical abortion drugs in the U.S., and for which Delgado is a respondent.
Chemical abortion and Abortion Pill Reversal
Chemical abortion consists of two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol. The mifepristone blocks progesterone in the pregnant mother’s system, starving the unborn baby of necessary nutrients. Misoprostol, taken a day or so following the mifepristone, causes the woman to go into labor, and if the chemical abortion is successful, she will deliver her deceased child. Chemical abortion now accounts for well over half of all U.S. abortions, with pro-life advocates arguing for safety measures for the drugs to be upheld and appropriate regulation of the drugs’ distribution.
Abortion proponents in the abortion industry, media, and beyond work to quash awareness and access to the APR protocol, as it represents the antidote to chemical abortion and demonstrates the fact that many women regret the abortion choice.
Heartbeat International and one of its local pregnancy help networks are currently the subject of a lawsuit out of California over the advertisement of APR as safe and effective.
If a woman has taken the first chemical abortion drug mifepristone and experiences regret and acts quickly enough, she may be able to save her child through Abortion Pill Reversal.
The progesterone protocol used in the Abortion Pill Reversal process is not new, having in fact been used routinely and safely to combat miscarriage since the 1950s. A 2018 peer-reviewed study showed positive results with APR; with 64 percent to 68 percent of the pregnancies saved, no increase in birth defects, and lower preterm delivery rate than the general population.
‘Be a prophetic voice’
Referencing the LIFE Runners mission to witness through its life-affirming message, Delgado told the crowd that those who are baptized have the mission of spreading the Gospel.
“We’re there to be a prophetic voice,” he said.
“And I want to educate you and make you enthusiastic prophets about Abortion Pill Reversal,” said Delgado. “Because too few people know about it these days – too few women who need it, too few people who could influence them in their time of crisis.”
He recapped the history of the initial Abortion Pill Reversal network in his practice before diving into the science of APR, stressing that the success of the APRN was a key point that LIFE Runners banquet attendees should take home.
Abortion Pill Reversal is safe and effective
“I want you to know that using abortion pill reversal is safe. It is effective,” Delgado said. “And women who are given that second chance at life are extremely grateful. They’ve shared that gratitude and they’ve been extremely grateful.”
“Even the times when we’ve been unsuccessful and the baby has died, they still are extremely grateful,” he said – because they had that chance to try and save their babies and this has quite a redemptive effect.
This is why prayers for these women are important too, Delgado said, that they’ll have a change of heart and accept that grace from the Lord.
He told the pro-life gathering that it’s estimated now in 2024 that at least 65 percent of all abortions in the United States are chemical abortions. He’d been told as well that the chemical abortion rate in Nebraska was 75 percent of all abortions.
This is very sad, Delgado said, because this is about 650,000 abortions in the year in the U.S.
The opportunity to save lives
“But it’s also a great opportunity,” Delgado said, “because remember, anytime the devil pounces, God can always turn that into good. He’s done that from the very beginning, from the Garden of Eden.”
Whereas with surgical abortion there is no turning back once the surgical instrument enters the womb, he said, there is a window of opportunity between the two chemical abortion drugs that women take.
“If a woman changes her mind,” he said, “we have the opportunity now to reverse that chemical abortion if that woman so chooses.”
“So, remember that that’s the prophetic message, is that this bad news is opportunity,” Delgado added. “It’s an opportunity to save more lives. It’s the opportunity to save the physical life of the preborn baby who’s being threatened, who’s on death row, and the opportunity to save the spiritual life of that mother who goes from being killer to savior.”
Delgado explained how progesterone thickens the lining of the uterus so that it’s receptive and ready to accept the preborn human embryo coming down the fallopian tube to implant at about day 5-7. It also acts like a super glue, causing the uterus and the placenta to remain very well attached. With the placenta well attached to the uterine wall, nutrition and hydration come to the baby and waste products move away from the baby. Progesterone keeps the uterine muscle relaxed so the uterine muscle can stretch and expand as the baby grows, keeping the cervix closed, protecting the baby inside world of the uterus.
Illustrating the good that progesterone does in the pregnant woman’s body, he explained how hormones work in the body like keys that fit into a lock, and turning the lock opens a door. If the key is the hormone and the lock is the receptor, then the door opening is the hormone effect.
When putting a key in a lock, if the key fits in the lock but doesn’t turn the lock, this is a false key – blocking the lock from the intended action.
“That’s exactly what mifepristone does,” Delgado said. “It’s a false key. It fits onto the receptor, but it blocks the receptor and does not allow the hormone door to open. Fortunately for us, however, that is a dynamic process.”
When that key goes in and then out of the receptor, that’s an opportunity for the progesterone to slip in, turn the lock and open the door, he said.
“So, our strategy is simple,” Delgado said. “We give supplemental progesterone so that there are more good guy keys lined up in front of those receptors ready to pounce on that receptor. As soon as the mifepristone comes off the receptor, we simply outcompete on a molecular basis the mifepristone until it washes out of the system. That’s how we reverse the effects of mifepristone.”
It’s between taking the mifepristone and before taking the second drug, misoprostol, where the window of opportunity lies to try and save the preborn child, he said.
More than 5,000 lives saved and counting
“Heartbeat International has calculated that over 5,000 documented births have taken place; babies who have been saved from mifepristone abortions by Abortion Pill Reversal,” Delgado told the LIFE Runners audience, to applause.
“We’ve helped women in all 50 states and about 70 countries,” he said. “We’ve helped spawn regional networks in Australia and Russia, Switzerland, and Canada. So, this is truly an international project, one that’s really bearing fruit right now.”
The survival for a preborn baby exposed to mifepristone if nothing else is done to intervene, is up to 25 percent, he said, and currently with the best APR protocols it is 68 percent survival.
Delgado had visited a local APR clinic that was having greater statistical success ahead of the banquet.
“So, this is a great innovation we’re seeing with all of these pro-life medical practitioners using their God-given talents to try to save these babies,” he said, mentioning potential plans to collaborate to augment APR research.
Persecution comes with doing the Lord’s work
Delgado referenced other such projects in the works, and that the FDA has been blocking a randomized controlled trial, adding, “So, I think it’s safe to say that there’s a lot of bias out there that we’re being persecuted, but I think we know that when we’re persecuted, we’re on the right track, because our Lord promised we’d be persecuted if we did His work, right?”
He told banquet attendees to watch for future research.
There is opposition from abortion proponents in the medical establishment and the abortion industry, he explained, with various heavy-handed efforts to suppress APR.
Whose idea of choice?
Delgado was puzzled at first, he said, as to why anyone who calls themselves “pro-choice” would oppose offering women a second chance at choice if they regret undergoing a chemical abortion. As time went on, however, he saw that there was investment in maintaining the narrative that abortion is “good” for women.
“This is why they’re so against us,” said Delgado, “because if anybody acknowledges that a woman might have a second feeling that she might regret her abortion and want to reverse it, well then that’s a chink in the armor of their narrative, which says that abortion is a great good for all women, right?”
“If it’s such a great good, why would women regret it?” he asked.
Delgado discussed the risks of chemical abortion to women and how it is becoming increasingly abused with more unregulated access. He also spoke of the importance of raising awareness of Abortion Pill Reversal, to give the many thousands of women would want to have abortion pill reversal if they knew it was available a second chance at choice.
Delgado concluded with the invitation for LIFE Runners to continue being a voice for life wherever they could.
“And remember,” he said, “in your own sphere of influence, be that prophetic voice. God bless you.”
LIFE Runners
More than 260 people ages one to 86 came from Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Colorado to the LIFE Runners event to hear Delgado’s message of hope through APR, including groups of young people from Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Nebraska, the University of Nebraska Omaha Newman Center, University of Nebraska Lincoln Newman Center, and Creighton University.
LIFE Runners is an international pro-life outreach founded to give witness, run, pray, and advocate to prevent abortion while wearing a life-saving message. Running is optional, and team members, runners and non-runners alike, are encouraged to wear jerseys and regalia with the message, “REMEMBER The Unborn – Jer 1:5.” Jeremiah 1:5 is the Scripture passage, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.”
LIFE Runners founder and President Pat Castle gave an update on the group’s impact in 2023, including 23k-plus teammates spread across 3,541 cities in 47 nations with 301 chapters sharing the REMEMBER the Unborn message with millions worldwide. LIFE Runners gained 2,141 new teammates in 2023, representing 10 percent growth. There were 18 new school and city chapters, and three new nations represented: Taiwan, Brazil, and the Republic of Korea. The group took part in 104 speaking and media events last year, with teammates covering 5,359 miles in the ministry’s A-Cross America Relay, and 75 teammates taking part in the national race retreat at the Crazy Horse Marathon (2024 registration open for both events) – all while wearing the REMEMBER the Unborn message.
Editor’s note: Heartbeat International manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) and Pregnancy Help News. The author is a LIFE Runners teammate.