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

Women Share Their Experiences with Mifepristone

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

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

Fearing the judgment she would face for becoming pregnant again—and under pressure from the baby’s father to handle the situation “responsibly” with an abortion—she eventually 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.”

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, in Hurm’s case, she 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 daycare, 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.

The Big Picture

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

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 added.

Legal Challenge

Mifeprex, the brand-name version of mifepristone, has been the subject of legal challenges for years. In January 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging the FDA’s requirement that the drug be dispensed in person by a certified provider, rather than through the mail or at a pharmacy.