CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA-- (NEWSPLEX) -- "it just seemed like if there was any inopportune time for me to get pregnant, this was it," said Krystal West.
Krystal West is a mother of six children, and adding another child wasn't necessarily in her plans. She decided to end the pregnancy, using the so-called "abortion pill," which is a two-step process, and after step one, she had second thoughts.
"When it comes to the medical field, where there is a will, I know there is a way, if there was any possible treatment for undoing what I had already done, it was too late, I couldn't throw it up out of my system," said West.
"No matter where you come from politically on the issue, these women are in a crisis and are struggling, sometimes people will make a decision and they will walk out of the room and then in the light of day say wow I didn't mean to do this," said Dr. Karen Pohailos.
Less than a couple of hours after taking the pill, Krystal began to regret her decision, and she came across a website called abortion pill reversal dot com, which has a hotline of available nurses that connected her with local doctor, Karen Pohailos. "We were able to see her and get the first progesterone shot in her about twenty-five hours after she had taken the pill, which was wonderful because the earlier you start the better, because it's very time sensitive, we have to fight the other medication," said Dr. Pohailos.
"The mifepristone doesn't directly attack the baby, so if we can give enough progesterone to keep the drug from getting to the receptors, if we can keep the placenta alive, there have been no cases of birth defects in babies born using this regimen," Dr. Pohailos explained.
Krystal waited two long days praying to find out if the baby had a heart beat, "you can do nothing but sit there and think about it, that's all you do is wait, and you wonder, you worry and you stress," said West.
On a Monday, after getting injections to reverse the abortion, she had an ultrasound done at UVa Medical Center, to find that the baby's heart was still beating. "I cried, I wasn't really thinking," West said. "There is no thoughts about that, it's relief, it was the biggest flood of relief that I've probably ever felt."
The chances of a baby surviving this procedure is sixty/forty, and Krystal said she was glad she took the risk.
"I'm not saying that people who want abortions are wrong, but I want those that regret the decision later, to know there is a choice out there," said West. "People say what if your baby has birth defects, it's possible, but my baby will be alive, and that's a choice that I made, I don't think it was my place to decide if the baby had a right to live."