Kansans voted overwhelmingly last year to protect abortion rights in the state. But despite being legal, patients seeking this procedure still need to undergo a waiting period, and providers are required to share a list of “mandatory disclosures” about the procedure.
Now, a group of abortion providers is suing the state over some of these requirements, saying that they “interfere with the principles of bodily integrity and patient autonomy that underlie informed consent.”
The lawsuit, filed in Johnson County district court last week, says that current guidelines require health care providers to share “inaccurate and ideological government-scripted messages that are designed to pressure patients into choosing childbirth over abortion.”
These messages include false assertions, like the idea that medication abortion can be reversed and that abortion is linked to a risk of breast cancer.
A panel of seven scientists enlisted by the Informed Consent Project, which is a team of researchers from Rutgers University that studies abortion policies across the country, found that nearly half of the statements in Kansas’ materials about fetal biological development in the first trimester are scientifically inaccurate or misleading.
Here’s a fact check on five of these claims.
Providers must tell patients: “It may be possible to reverse the intended effects of a medication abortion that uses mifepristone.”
This requirement is not currently active but was recently passed by the Kansas Legislature. It’s set to go into effect in July.
Fact check: Mifepristone is the first pill taken during a medication abortion to halt the production of progesterone, a hormone necessary to pregnancy.
The procedure to “reverse” the effects of mifepristone is unproven, and research related to this “reversibility” is insufficient for medical standards.
Abortion pill reversal is a concept promoted by anti-abortion organizations and offered at several crisis pregnancy centers.
The procedure is to give a woman a high dose of progesterone, the hormone that maintains pregnancy, after she has taken mifepristone, which blocks progesterone. However, very few studies have been done on the practice.
“Claims regarding abortion ‘reversal’ treatment are not based on science and do not meet clinical standards,” writes the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
A 2012 experiment attempted to “reverse” the effects of this pill by giving it to six pregnant women and then administering them various doses of progesterone to continue their pregnancies. The experiment had only partial success, included no control group and was not supervised by an institutional review board.
A 2020 experiment attempted to study mifepristone “reversal” in a controlled setting, but only enrolled 12 patients and halted the study after three of them were hospitalized for severe hemorrhages. Two of those women were in the control group and didn’t receive progesterone.
Providers must tell patients: “By no later than 20 weeks from fertilization, the unborn child has the physical structures necessary to experience pain.”
Fact check: The latest research indicates that a fetus does not have the capacity to feel pain until after 28 weeks of gestation. This is because the developing brain does not form the neural connection necessary to receive sensory signals until at least this age.
The ability to distinguish between a benign physical sensation and a painful physical sensation does not develop until late in the third trimester, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Providers must tell patients: Abortion is associated with a “risk of premature birth in future pregnancies.”
Fact check: A handful of studies, like this one from 2009, suggest that surgical abortions may be linked to a slight increase in the risks of preterm birth. However, more recent research casts doubt on this conclusion.
A 2018 study in Nature of over 3,600 pregnant people found no correlation between previous abortions and preterm births or low birth weight for first-time parents.
“Generally, elective abortion isn’t thought to cause fertility issues or complications in future pregnancies,” wrote Yvonne Butler Tobah for the Mayo Clinic in 2022.
Some have even noted that preterm birth rates are higher in states that restrict abortion, which experts say may be due to the increased stress and shortages of health care providers that these restrictions cause.
Providers must tell patients: Abortion is associated with a “risk of breast cancer.”
Fact check: Researchers have known for decades that there is no reliable link between having an abortion and a higher chance of developing breast cancer. A 1997 study of over 1.5 million Danish women found no link between having an abortion and a higher chance of getting breast cancer.
According to the American Cancer Society, “The size of this study and the manner in which it was done provide good evidence that induced abortion does not affect a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer.”
A Harvard study of 105,000 women, a California study of over 100,000 women, a nine-country European study of over 260,000 women, a French study of over 100,000 women and another Danish study of over 25,000 women all also found no link between abortion and breast cancer.
Providers must tell patients: “By six weeks… all four chambers of the heart are present, and more than one million heartbeats have occurred.”
Fact check: An embryo does not yet have a heart at six weeks of gestation. While pulses within cardiac tissue may be referred to as a “heartbeat” in non-scientific terms, a fetus’s heart does not develop distinct chambers that can be detected by an ultrasound until 17-20 weeks of gestation, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Instead, one doctor described these pulses to WIRED as “a group of cells with electrical activity… We are in no way talking about any kind of cardiovascular system.” These pulses are not an indicator of a fetus’s viability outside the uterus.
The Star’s Katie Bernard contributed reporting.
Do you have more questions about abortion or medical disinformation in Kansas or Missouri? Ask the Service Journalism team at [email protected].