The Idaho House of Representatives [official website] passed a bill [text, PDF] on Monday requiring the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare [official website] to provide information to women seeking abortions about reversing a medical abortion once it has begun.

The bill is based on a study [text, PDF] in which six pregnant women took mifepristone, a medication used to induce abortions, and four were allegedly able to continue their pregnancies after taking various levels of progesterone. Many health professionals and lawmakers are strongly opposed to the legislation and questioned the legitimacy of the unscientific study.

Planned Parenthood [advocacy website] has opposed [press release] the legislation for being a “harmful anti-abortion bill” that has “no basis in science.” Both the American Medical Association and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) [advocacy websites] have opposed the law. ACOG stated [statement, PDF] that “politicians should never … require that physicians tell patients inaccurate information.” Additionally, they assert that the “study was not supervised by an institutional review board (IRB) or an ethical review committee, required to protect human research subjects” which raises “serious questions regarding the ethics and scientific validity of the results.”

Following the party-line vote which every minority Democrat rejected, SB 1243 has been sent to Governor Butch Otter [official website] for approval. The bill had already passed in the Senate with a 29-6 vote.

Federal courts have previously struck down [JURIST report] restrictive abortion laws passed through the Idaho legislature.