The stakes are critical in the trial for The People of the State of California v. Heartbeat International & RealOptions, and Albert Mohler noted such in a recent segment of his podcast.
“Here, you're talking about something that is life-and-death,” Mohler stated. “It is blessing and curse, set right before us. It is truth and a lie. And we just need to understand what is at stake.”
Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, analyzed the July 30 Wall Street Journal commentary on the APR trial co-authored by San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and Oakland Bishop Michael Barber in the August 3 episode of his podcast The Briefing.
Mohler commended Cordileone and Barber for their op-ed.
“So, they're putting themselves on the line here, and I deeply appreciate that,” Mohler said. “These two leaders, Catholic leaders, there in the Bay Area, are calling out what's going on in California.”
The People v. Heartbeat International & RealOptions is the first case in the U.S. concerning Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) to go to trial. It centers on the freedom to share information with women about APR, and women’s rights to access information about all available options following a chemical abortion.
Heartbeat is the largest network of pregnancy help organizations in the U.S. and the world, manages the Abortion Pill Rescue Network, a network of nearly 1,500 healthcare professionals, pregnancy centers, and hospitals that administer the APR protocol. RealOptions Obria Medical Clinics is a group of four licensed medical clinics in the San Francisco Bay area and a Heartbeat affiliate that offers APR.
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California Attorney General sued Heartbeat and RealOptions in September 2023, alleging fraudulent and misleading claims in the promotion of APR seeking to bar them from advertising the protocol as safe and effective. Bonta seeks up to $20 million in penalties. The case has implications beyond California for freedom of speech, pregnancy help, and whether state attorneys general can impose devastating fines against a charity over viewpoints with which those AGs disapprove. It has been litigated thus far in California superior court in Oakland. Testimony concluded in late July and closing arguments are scheduled for September.
Abortion Pill Reversal is an updated protocol of a treatment used since the 1950s to prevent miscarriage. It entails prescribing progesterone to counteract the effects of mifepristone, the first drug in the two-drug chemical abortion regimen.
All major studies show that using progesterone to counteract an in-progress chemical abortion can be effective because it is bio-identical to the hormone a woman’s body produces to sustain her pregnancy.
A 2018 peer-reviewed study showed positive results with APR, including 64%-68% of the pregnancies saved through APR, no increase in birth defects, and lower preterm delivery rate than the general population.
About 200 women call the APRN each month and start Abortion Pill Reversal, equating to six reversal starts a day. Statistics show that more than 8,000 lives have been saved through APR and counting.
Heartbeat and RealOptions contend that no woman should be forced to complete and abortion she no longer wants.
The evidence presented in the trial for what Bonta called “false advertising” and “predatory and unlawful” actions on the part of Heartbeat and RealOptions was a problematic study by an abortion doctor that was halted due to concerns over the risks.
The study has been continually portrayed in the media as proving APR is not safe, but the reality, which came out in court, was that those in the study with severe bleeding were the placebo group that did not receive progesterone treatment used by APR. So in his own presentation of evidence Bonta has failed to prove APR unsafe while pointing out the dangers of mifepristone.
Additionally, Bonta’s office has conceded it has received no complaints from women about APR.
“California’s attorney general has found no evidence that any woman has complained of harm by the defendants,” Cordileone and Barber wrote. “That didn’t dissuade the state, which is marshaling it taxpayer-funded resources to shut these ministries down.”
Tweet This: California’s AG has found no evidence that any woman has complained of harm by Heartbeat and RealOptions - That didn’t dissuade the state.
Cordileone, who had posted about the case on X July 7 calling the lawsuit “an abuse of power by the State of California,” and Barber, were forthright in their article in calling out the State of California, and likewise New York, where similar litigation is in progress, for targeting pregnancy help and alternatives to abortion.
They said of Heartbeat and RealOptions, “Their offense is telling women who regret swallowing the abortion pill that there’s a medical treatment that can sometimes save their babies.”
Cordileone and Barber concluded their column with a question regarding those who profess to be “pro-choice”: “Are they really pro-choice, or do they just like killing?”
Mohler noted in his podcast that this is the culture of death seeking to punish Christian nonprofits for informing women they can reverse the effects of the abortion pill.
“And you can see exactly how the culture of death works, and the insidious way the culture of death just digs in,” he said. “Just digging in with its claws, just unwilling to let go.”
“And I appreciate the way the two bishops ended the article,” said Mohler. “Because they really know what they're doing, issuing a moral challenge.”
“In this case, we’re talking about nothing less than a second chance for life when it comes to an unborn baby,” Mohler said.
One of the individuals giving testimony on behalf of the defense in the case is a woman named Elizabeth who took the first drug used in the two-part combination of a chemical abortion. Cordileone and Barber touched on her story in their commentary piece.
Elizabeth testified about how she changed her mind immediately and that she went into the abortion facility bathroom to throw up the pill she had swallowed. She was unable to do so.
Elizabeth then went home and with her boyfriend, now her husband, desperately sought the information Bonta is looking to suppress.
“What the Attorney General is really attacking is free, truthful information that women asked for, and every word of it is protected by the First Amendment,” said Paul Jonna, special counsel for Thomas More Society, the legal non-profit representing Heartbeat and RealOptions in the case.
“Consumer fraud, the prosecutors are calling it,” Cordileone and Barber wrote in their op-ed. “Legal scholars call it an abuse of power.”
They then quote Michael McConnell, law professor at Stanford:
“This novel use of California’s commercial-fraud statute seems designed to intimidate nonprofit organizations that—with no hope of commercial gain—seek to educate the public about services that are lawful but contrary to the ideological preferences of the government.”
Mohler noted that “this is a big issue and it’s not going to be limited eventually to California and New York State, to the attorneys general in those states.”
Cordileone and Barber pointed to impending expansion of lawfare should the case be won by the state. They said it was a “painful experience” reading the depositions of the women who were so desperate for the help APR offers.
“To be a Catholic priest these days, as we both are, is to have heard many similar stories of women who felt pressured to have an abortion they didn’t want,” the bishops said.
They discussed in opening their article how Elizabeth searched online for how to undo a chemical abortion and found Heartbeat International which refers women to licensed doctors for APR treatment.
“It worked. Ms. Barrett is the mother of a healthy girl,” they wrote.
“The state of California wants to be sure that such things never happen again,” the two bishops said.
“What kind of people see a pregnant woman who wants to reverse the effects of an abortion pill and think, ‘Let’s punish the nonprofits that informed her she has a choice’?” Cordileone and Barber asked.
Mohler expressed gratitude for the two bishops’ courage in writing the WSJ op-ed and echoed the thought that pushing abortion as “choice” is a lie.
“Here, you have attorneys general in two states, in the name of the law, saying they don't want women to have the choice to save their baby, or even to attempt to do so,” Mohler said. “That really tells us all we need to know.”
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.
