When Mackenna Greene took the abortion pill to end the life of her unborn daughter, she immediately knew she had made the wrong choice.
“I’ll admit that in the days leading up to it, I was not excited,” Greene told The Daily Signal. “I was second-guessing myself. I found myself trying to convince myself that I was making the right decision.”
“Immediately after taking it, I felt regret,” she said of the abortion pill, “and I had a feeling that that was a very bad decision.”
Greene said she googled her options and found Chelsea Mynyk, a nurse-midwife at the life-affirming Catholic medical center Bella Health and Wellness in Englewood, Colorado. Mynyk prescribes abortion pill reversal medication to women who regret starting a chemical abortion.
Greene took progesterone to counteract the effects of the first chemical abortion pill. About a month ago, she gave birth to her daughter.
“I felt like I had worked my whole life to have her,” Greene said. “I’m the luckiest girl alive to be looking at this girl’s face. And thank goodness that the reversal was successful.”
“She’s got such a personality and sometimes when I look at her, I think of missing out on all of that, and it hurts,” Greene said. “I’m just so lucky, so blessed, to be able to look into her face every day.”
But Colorado, where Greene and Mynyk live, passed a law in April 2023 forbidding doctors and nurses from providing the abortion pill reversal. Under that law, Mynyk could be fined up to $20,000 each time she helps reverse the effects of an abortion pill.
That same month, Becket—previously the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty—sued the state of Colorado on behalf of Bella Health and Wellness, securing a preliminary injunction preventing enforcement of the law against the faith-based OB-GYN practice.
In January, an anonymous individual filed a complaint against Mynyk because she offers abortion pill reversal, and the Colorado Board of Nursing opened an investigation. In response, Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian law firm, filed a motion to intervene on Mynyk’s behalf. It was granted in April.
“This is a law that restricts the ability of medical professionals like Chelsea [Mynyk] to save lives,” said Kevin Theriot, a senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom.
Theriot is representing Mynyk as she challenges the Colorado law so that she may continue saving babies such as Greene’s.
“It singles out those women that have regret, just like Mackenna, and decide that they don’t want to go through with the chemical abortion and doesn’t allow them to give to receive this progesterone, which is a drug that’s been used for over 50 years to stop miscarriage,” Theriot told The Daily Signal. “Chelsea herself has proven that it definitely increases the chances that moms like Mackenna can save their babies.”
Medical professionals should be able to talk about and prescribe the abortion pill, Theriot said.
The law “really doesn’t make any sense unless you see it from the perspective of this radical abortion lobby that says that we want women to have access to abortion, and we don’t think they should be able to change their minds,” Theriot said.
Theriot said he hopes the court will enter a permanent injunction putting the Colorado law on hold because it violates the rights of Mynyk and patients such as Greene.
“I think that would be very difficult to practice as a provider, not being able to offer this option to women, especially when they regret their abortion and they want something to take to reverse that, and especially because we know this is safe,” Mynyk said. “It’s natural progesterone. It’s not some sort of random pill we’re giving.”
Everyone should be concerned about laws such as this that violate religious liberty and freedom of speech, the lawyer said.
“The primary reason why this process is so important is because it saves lives, and Mackenna and her daughter are a perfect example of that,” Theriot said. “But it also is a treatment that medical professionals like Chelsea ought to be able to talk about, because it’s a viable option.”
Listen to the full conversation with Greene and Theriot below: