Heartbeat International, affiliated with more than 2,000 facilities, aims to convince people to continue their pregnancies

The organization behind an international network of anti-abortion facilities is misleading people with claims that abortions can be “reversed”, a lawsuit filed on Monday by Letitia James, the New York attorney general, alleges.

The organization, Heartbeat International, is affiliated with more than 2,000 facilities that aim to convince people to continue their pregnancies. In recent years, many such centers, which are often Christian and sometimes known as crisis pregnancy centers, have started to promote a controversial practice known as “abortion pill reversal”, which claims that people can halt a medication abortion midway through.

The first randomized, controlled clinical study to attempt to study this “reversal” protocol’s effectiveness came to an abrupt stop in 2019, after three participants landed in the hospital hemorrhaging blood. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the pre-eminent membership group for OB-GYNS, has said that claims about abortion reversal are “not based on science and do not meet clinical standards”.