This article originally appeared in the Thomas More Society 2025 Impact Report. To explore the full Impact Report, click here.

Elizabeth was a cashier at Lowe’s, barely scraping by, when she found out she was pregnant. Planned Parenthood told her she could start a chemical abortion that day—or try to get back on the packed schedule later. Feeling cornered, she took the first pill.

She hadn’t even left the building when she learned the baby’s father wanted to keep their child. And it hit her: she’d wanted that too, all along. Desperate and borderline hysterical, she tried to throw the pill up. Then she searched frantically online for anything that could undo what she had just set in motion. She found a number buried on the third page of a Google search: the Abortion Pill Reversal helpline. A nurse answered. A doctor called back in fifteen minutes. By that evening, she had started treatment. Her beautiful baby daughter was born healthy in January 2024 and is now the center of her world.

Abortion Pill Reversal is a progesterone-based protocol that can counteract the effects of mifepristone—the first pill in a chemical abortion—allowing a mother the opportunity to save her child if she changes her mind. Peer-reviewed studies document success rates of 64–68%, and since the protocol became available, thousands of babies have been saved.

Elizabeth’s story is not unique. Erika, another California mother, took the first pill under intense external pressure and immediately regretted it. Agonizing at home that night, she got online and found RealOptions, a pregnancy help center that connected her with APR treatment. “I am eternally grateful to RealOptions for the gift of my son’s life,” Erika wrote in a sworn declaration to the court, “and for aiding me when I thought all was lost.” Her son is preparing to celebrate his ninth birthday. Elizabeth and Erika’s sworn declarations included photos of their children—real faces, real lives, saved by Abortion Pill Reversal and the pregnancy centers that told them the truth.

Now California Attorney General Rob Bonta is suing the very organizations that helped them. In September 2023, Bonta filed suit against Heartbeat International and RealOptions, claiming it is “fraud” and “deceptive advertising” to tell women about Abortion Pill Reversal. He wants crippling fines, a permanent gag order, and censorship of the life-saving information that gave Elizabeth and Erika their second chance.

Thomas More Society took the case, and after more than two years of hard-fought litigation, has taken the state’s arguments apart piece by piece. Discovery has produced zero consumer complaints, zero evidence that APR is unsafe, and zero scientific basis for restricting constitutionally protected speech.

In October 2025, Thomas More Society scored an important victory along the way when an Illinois court compelled the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists to turn over documents and communications related to its public statements opposing APR—including communications between ACOG and Bonta’s office. TMS attorneys believe the records may shed light on the extent to which the state’s case rests on coordinated messaging rather than independent scientific analysis.

Depositions and discovery have also produced revealing findings elsewhere in the case. The state’s primary evidence against APR was a study conducted by Dr. Mitchell Creinin, an abortion provider, which claimed to show that APR posed a risk of hemorrhaging. But deposition testimony revealed the opposite: no women in the APR treatment group actually experienced hemorrhaging. The study’s published conclusions did not match its own data. Meanwhile, the FDA’s own pharmacological review concluded that progesterone “antagonizes” mifepristone, “allowing for normal pregnancy and delivery”—the very mechanism underlying APR. The science Bonta claimed didn’t exist was there all along. Meanwhile, the “science” he relied on fell apart under scrutiny.

In January 2026, TMS filed for summary judgment in People v. Heartbeat International & RealOptions, presenting sworn declarations from mothers like Elizabeth and Erika alongside extensive medical evidence. As Peter Breen, TMS Executive VP and Head of Litigation, put it: “[Bonta] has no consumer complaints, no evidence of harm, and no scientific basis for his claims. What he does have is a political agenda to silence pro-life voices. Fortunately, the Constitution doesn’t permit that.”

TMS attorneys are also pressing the fight on a second front in the Ninth Circuit, where attorneys are appealing on behalf of Culture of Life Family Services, a Southern California pregnancy center whose speech about APR has been chilled by Bonta’s legal campaign. The appeal argues that Bonta’s targeting of pro-life ministries constitutes unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination—punishing religious pregnancy centers for sharing information about APR while taking no action against abortion providers who make highly contestable (and sometimes provably false) claims about mifepristone’s safety.

The fight extends beyond California. In New York, Attorney General Letitia James launched a copycat attack on APR in 2024, sending threat letters to a dozen pregnancy help organizations and filing suit to silence them. TMS attorneys filed a preemptive lawsuit on behalf of Heartbeat International, CompassCare, and a coalition of pregnancy centers. In a separate federal case on behalf of several other New York pregnancy centers, a preliminary injunction was secured, blocking James from censoring those centers. The Heartbeat case continues in state court, where Thomas More Society is fighting to protect the entire network. The pattern is clear: pro-abortion attorneys general are waging a coordinated, coast-to-coast campaign to shut down the pregnancy centers and pro-life ministries that offer women a second chance.

“These women are not abstractions in a policy debate,” Breen said. “They are mothers who changed their minds, sought help, and now have beautiful, healthy children because someone was allowed to tell them the truth about Abortion Pill Reversal. We’ll keep fighting to keep that phone line ringing.”