A law requiring doctors to advise women seeking medication abortions that the procedure may be reversed would steer patients toward doctors conducting potentially unethical research, according to an affidavit filed in a case challenging the law.

The state has agreed to delay the enforcement of the law, passed as SB1318. Scheduled to take effect on July 3, the law would require doctors to tell women about the controversial procedure, which some pro-life medical professionals claim can reverse the effects of a medication abortion.

Many health care providers question if the procedure, which calls doses of progesterone after the first of two medication abortion pills is taken, truly works, noting that there’s no adequate proof of its effectiveness.

And to require doctors to inform patients of the procedure would promote the ongoing study of the procedure, which Steven Joffe, an associate professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, argues is an unethical form of research.

Enforcing SB1318 “forces physicians to effectively steer their patients to physicians who appear to be conducting research on humans without any oversight or approval by an independent ethics committee,” Joffe wrote in an affidavit filed June 8. “This is not only troubling for women seeking medication abortions, but it highlights another way in which (SB1318) forces physicians to act against their patients’ best interests.”

Doctors practicing the abortion reversal procedure are tracking and reporting the outcomes of the procedure to Dr. George Delgado, a San Diego-based physician who runs the Abortion Pill Reversal network.

By tracking the use of the abortion reversal procedure and its outcomes, Delgado claims a 56 percent success rate, and that the procedure has reversed the effects of more than 100 medication abortions.

Joffe questioned the motives of doctors advising for a procedure they intend to study “with the express goal of publishing the results.” And the end goal, Joffe noted, is to change the standard of care for women seeking abortions.

The result, Joffe wrote, is an unethical study conducted on human subjects with no oversight. Without proper oversight – typically approved by an institutional review board when research is conducted on human subjects – there’s no guarantee of the safety and efficacy of a proposed treatment, Joffe wrote.

SB1318, if enforced, would have physicians sending their patients to “doctors offering an unproven, experimental treatment and conducting unethical research. This is contrary to medical ethics and potentially harmful to women seeking abortions,” Joffe wrote.

Delgado said he disagrees with Joffe.

“We are simply following patients with medical issues and following what their doctors are doing to treat them and just tabulating the outcomes – nothing wrong with that,” Delgado said.

He said it is unethical to do a randomized trial using a placebo on a pregnant woman. Delgado said, however, he foresees doing a randomized, controlled blind trial in which different forms of progesterone were used and with different treatment regimes.