IN-DEPTH: This Mother Was Able to Reverse an Abortion Pill and Save Her Baby’s Life

Iowa mother Sarah Hurm is "unapologetically pro-life" after making the decision to reverse her chemical abortion. Courtesy of Sarah Hurm

As the legal battle over the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) controversial approval of the abortion drug mifepristone continues, women whose lives have been affected by its use are stepping forward to share their experiences.

Sarah Hurm is an Iowa mother of four who became pregnant in 2018 with her fourth child by a third father.

She feared the judgment she would face for getting pregnant again and faced pressure from the baby’s father to handle the situation “responsibly” with an abortion. Hurm set aside her reservations as a Catholic and decided to have a chemical abortion.

At her appointment, Hurm was told that her baby had a strong heartbeat—a fact that unexpectedly brought her to tears.

At that time, the Iowa legislature was considering a ban on abortions after a fetal heartbeat could be detected. And while the ultrasound technician told Hurm she should consider herself “lucky” that the law hadn’t taken effect yet, she found herself wishing that it had.

“I wanted a way out, but I just didn’t know what else to do, so I continued with the appointment and ended up taking the mifepristone,” she told The Epoch Times.

A Change of Heart

The process of a chemical, or medication, abortion involves two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. The mifepristone, taken first, blocks the pregnancy hormone progesterone, causing the uterine lining to break down and the life of the unborn child to end. The misoprostol is taken afterward to expel the deceased child and other tissue from the uterus.

Though some women start the process at home, Hurm took the first pill in front of the abortion provider and was then given the next set of pills to be taken in the following days.

“As soon as I took that first pill, I felt the weight of my decision,” she said. “I was hit with just intense emotions—despair, regret, grief, panic. And so, I went home, and I just broke down.”

Later, while picking her children up from day care, she experienced yet another wave of regret.

“Picking them up, seeing their little faces, I just kept thinking ... ‘You guys are loved, you’re happy, you’re getting to live your life. Why doesn’t this baby deserve that?’”

At that moment, Hurm knew she had made a mistake. After coming across an ad for the Abortion Pill Reversal hotline, she dialed the number and was referred to a local provider, who said her baby’s heartbeat was detectable, but “not great.”

The doctor stressed that the reversal process—which involves taking high doses of progesterone—might not be successful, but Hurm was determined to try.

“I remember saying, ‘I don’t need promises, I just need hope. I just need to know I have done everything I can to try and reverse this decision.'”

After weeks of treatment, Hurm received the encouraging news that she would likely carry her baby to term. And in January 2019, she delivered a “perfectly healthy, happy, yet colicky” baby boy.

And while both she and her son were able to avoid the life-threatening complications others have endured from mifepristone, she said the experience has transformed her perspective on abortion in general.

“I have become unapologetically pro-life, but from a very compassionate standpoint,” she said.

A woman looks at an abortion pill—RU-486, or mifepristone—displayed on a smartphone in Arlington, Va., on May 8, 2020. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

The Big Picture

While other women who have had chemical abortions may feel like they made the right choice for themselves, Laura Simpson, a Kentucky mom who adopted both of her sons, stressed that such decisions affect not just pregnant women, but also those who can’t become pregnant.

“You may have an unplanned pregnancy and ... maybe God has that baby intended for somebody else,” she said. “I just think that people don’t see the big picture in all of that.”

As a Christian couple who struggled to conceive a child of their own, Simpson and her husband saw adoption not as a last resort, but as the path God had always intended for them to take.

“We did feel that everything failed because we were supposed to adopt,” she said, noting that about two years after they adopted their eldest son, they felt called to adopt again.

But by that point, it was 2020, and the COVID-19 pandemic made the already difficult process of adoption that much harder.

After experiencing months of letdowns, Simpson’s husband wanted to give up, but she said she believed their child was still out there. In desperation, she prayed for guidance and that, if they were meant to adopt again, God would send her husband a sign.

The next day, the Simpsons received a call from their adoption agency—a baby boy had been born at their local hospital, and his mother had specifically chosen them to be his parents.

The baby’s birth mother, they learned, had taken the abortion pill months earlier but didn’t realize until she was 31 weeks pregnant that it had failed.

But the child’s survival was not the only miracle at work, Simpson noted.

“The biggest miracle in all of this is that when the birth mother was looking through the parent profile books, she got to ours and was like, ‘These people look familiar.’ ... She knew who we were because my husband had coached her in basketball 10 years before. So he was the reason that she chose us,” Simpson said.

And that piece of information, Simpson said, was all the proof she—and her husband—needed to know that her prayer had been answered.

“And, miraculously, [the baby] made it, and he’s now with us, and he’s thriving, and he does not seem to have any side effects from the drugs,” she said.

Legal Challenge

Mifeprex, the brand-name version of mifepristone, was first approved by the FDA in 2000, but a lawsuit filed in November asserts that the agency, under political pressure, rushed that process.

Filed by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and four doctors, the lawsuit has raised a stir among abortion proponents who fear that the pill’s approval will be revoked, limiting access to what has become the most common method of abortion (accounting for 53 percent of abortions) in the United States, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.

Although the FDA has assured that mifepristone is safe and that its approval was based on a “thorough and comprehensive review,” the agency also acknowledges that serious adverse effects—including more than two dozen deaths and hundreds of hospitalizations—have been associated with its use.

On April 7, a federal judge granted a nationwide injunction temporarily blocking FDA approval for the drug as the litigation process plays out. However, a week later, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals partially overturned that decision, and then on April 21, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to stay the injunction, allowing the pill to remain widely available.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Alexis McGill Johnson said her organization was “relieved” by the court’s decision but would not become complacent.

“We can take a breath, but we are not losing our vigilance,” she said in a statement. “Anti-abortion politicians and their allies will not stop until abortion is banned nationwide. Medication abortion is very much still under threat—as is abortion and access to other sexual and reproductive health care.

“While mifepristone’s approval remains intact and it stays on the market for now, patients and health care providers shouldn’t be at the mercy of the court system. Planned Parenthood will continue to fight so that everyone can make their own decisions about their bodies, lives, and futures.”

But Simpson said she felt that women were not being adequately informed to make such decisions.

“When they choose to take these abortion drugs, I just think so much more needs to be included—you know, therapy, education. I just feel like people aren’t educated enough to make that decision, and it’s really sad,” she said.

Likewise, Hurm said she feels that the drug’s serious adverse effects, which can include hemorrhaging and sepsis, show that it isn’t safe.

“I personally believe that the approval was rushed,” she said, “especially because there’s so many women who went through with a chemical abortion who come out saying, ‘I had no idea about this,’ or ‘I hemorrhaged,’ or ‘I have complications from it.’

“There’s not enough truth surrounding this drug. And I feel like women deserve so much better than hemorrhaging alone in their bathroom while flushing their deceased child down the toilet.”

And to reveal the truth, she said, compassion will be needed from those on both sides of the argument going forward.

“We really need to search out the full truth—even if that means sitting down with someone you don’t agree with and just hearing their side. We can’t get to truth by sitting and yelling at each other from both sides, but not listening,” she said.

“So I just think we need to lead with love but also understand that women and children deserve better than the war that’s going on right now.”