The California pregnancy medical clinic being sued by the state’s attorney general for sharing information about Abortion Pill Reversal is putting faith at the forefront as litigation plays out and remaining focused on the fact that women deserve to know they have a second chance to keep their pregnancy with APR.
RealOptions Obria Medical Clinics, is facing legal action along with Heartbeat International by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the AG claiming that APR is medical misinformation, and that RealOptions and Heartbeat are guilty of a business code violation for false advertising. Bonta is seeking to prohibit both Heartbeat and RealOptions from “advertising Abortion Pill Reversal as safe and effective.”
Heartbeat is the largest network of pregnancy help organizations in the U.S. and globally and manages the Abortion Pill Rescue Network, a network of nearly 1,500 healthcare professionals, pregnancy centers, and hospitals worldwide that administer the APR protocol.
RealOptions is faith-based medical clinic that provides both men’s and women’s health services through four licensed medical clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area.
APR is a newer application of a treatment used since the 1950s to prevent threatened miscarriage, using bioidentical progesterone to counter the effects of mifepristone, the first of two drugs in a chemical abortion.
Mifepristone blocks progesterone, the natural hormone necessary in a woman’s system to sustain pregnancy. The second pill, misoprostol, taken a day or so later, prompts the mother to go into labor and deliver her deceased child.
If a woman has taken the first abortion pill and acts quickly enough it may be possible to save her unborn child with APR. A 2018 peer-reviewed study found that 64%-68% of the pregnancies were saved through APR, saw no increase in birth defects and also a lower preterm delivery rate than the general population.
Statistics to date show that more than 8,000 lives have been saved through the APRN. RealOptions has had 44 babies born following APR treatment, including three sets of twins and seven more pregnancies in progress.
Like Heartbeat, RealOptions personnel learned of Bonta’s lawsuit after the AG’s office issued a press release on the suit in September 2023 and the pregnancy help medical clinic began receiving media inquiries.
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RealOptions determined early on after being served notice of the lawsuit that it would continue to offer the APR protocol and has not stopped accepting APR patients throughout the case.
Chief Executive Officer Tasha Keirns credits the faith and fortitude of RealOptions’s CEO at the time, Valerie Hill.
“Valerie is not led by fear or intimidation,” Keirns told Pregnancy Help News. “And she felt very strongly from the Lord, that we would continue offering APR.”
“We've continued operating and offering APR without fear, and with full faith and confidence in the services that we're providing,” she said.
RealOptions has used its annual benefit dinner as an opportunity to educate and update supporters on APR. The clinics have hosted APR pioneer George Delgado and APR mom Rebekah Hagan as keynotes in the time since the case began along with having APR patients share their testimony via video.
Keirns, an RN and BSN, was Director of Nursing for the clinics when the lawsuit began. She had also served as a nurse on the APR hotline in addition to her roles with RealOptions. She was tasked with responding to some of the medical interrogatories that the medical clinic received and provided deposition testimony.
It’s not something she’d done before so Keirns was nervous at first.
But that soon gave way to gratitude and confidence.
The support from within RealOptions, the board and other staff, was significant, she said. They set up a prayer network of people praying every hour throughout each day during the four days of deposition.
“By the time it got to my day, I was so thankful to have just the opportunity,” Keirns said. “What an honor is to serve the Lord in this capacity to be able to be a representative and a voice for him, to speak on His behalf for life.”
She remarked on the State of California’s abortion-affirming political stance on reproductive freedom and said she doesn’t believe life has to be a political topic.
“Unfortunately, our culture has turned what is a foundational biblical truth and made it political, making this deposition a beautiful opportunity to share the truth in how APR is saving lives,” said Keirns. “I felt a lot of peace. I was excited for it. I had a lot of joy walking into the deposition.”
“And that only comes from the Lord,” she added.
“It's a feeling that doesn't make any rational sense as a human being in a new circumstance with high stakes,” Keirns said. “But knowing that God is in control and praying that His will be done through this lawsuit, while being open and obedient to God, allows us to press forward in faith as He speaks through us.”
Along with the prayer and faith component, Keirns said RealOptions remains committed to offer the women and men they serve with a choice to try and save their pregnancy if change their minds about chemical abortion.
“We firmly believe that no woman should be forced to complete an abortion she no longer consents to,” she said. “That's an important takeaway, that this is part of informed consent.”
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“That if women are opting into a medical abortion, taking the abortion pill, if they do change their mind about the pregnancy and realize this is something they no longer want to continue with,” said Keirns, “that real women's rights is informing them that they do have an option to stop their abortion, that they do not have to continue and they should not be forced to continue with a medical procedure that they no longer consent to.”
All RealOptions is advocating for, Keirns said, is that a woman maintains that right of choice, and she can choose to stop her abortion if she sees fit and if her medical professionals are telling her that this is a viable option for her.
“What other medical procedure is there that you would be forced to complete without your consent?” she asked.
“And so, it's truly important that women have the right to make their own decision,” Keirns said. “And if California was truly a pro-choice state, as they claim, they should be pro-Abortion Pill Reversal, because this is about a woman's right to choose. This is about informed consent. This is about her bodily autonomy. This is about her reproductive health.”
Following an April 29 hearing where RealOptions and Heartbeat International, represented by legal non-profit Thomas More Society, asked for summary judgement (a ruling issued before trial that would resolve the lawsuit), the parties are in a waiting period pending next steps in the case, with a currently scheduled trial date of June 1.
Editor's note: Heartbeat International manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) and Pregnancy Help News. Heartbeat is the subject of two lawsuits brought by state AGs concerning sharing information about Abortion Pill Reversal.
