The bench trial in People v. Heartbeat International began June 24 in Alameda County Superior Court and is continuing. In it, the California Attorney General put forward Dr. Mitchell Creinin as its lead expert to provide testimony supporting the State’s claim that Abortion Pill Reversal (APR) is dangerous and unproven. Creinin is a UC Davis OB-GYN, a founding member of the Society of Family Planning who has written in favor of population control (see #10), and a self-described abortion researcher who has admitted in court to performing more than 5,000 abortions over the course of his career.

The linchpin of Creinin’s testimony is a 2020 UC Davis study in which he gave mifepristone to pregnant women and then randomized them to receive either progesterone or placebo, purportedly to test whether progesterone could reverse the abortion process. He halted the study early and published the incomplete results as a double-blind trial (although questions are now being raised about the strength of his study design). That study is the scientific backbone of the AG’s case and is being used to argue that APR is ineffective and poses serious safety risks.

Paul Jonna, Thomas More Society Special Counsel and Partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP, led the defense’s cross-examination of Dr. Creinin. Here are 10 moments from court that raised serious questions about his testimony—and the case built around it.

1. He Privately Called His 2020 Study “Pseudo-Blinded”—Then Told the Public and the Court It Was Double-Blind

The double-blind study design was a hallmark of Creinin’s 2020 UC Davis study on Abortion Pill Reversal. But internal UC Davis emails reveal that the Investigational Drug Service warned Creinin repeatedly that they could not produce a matching placebo. The IDS pharmacist wrote that the placebo would “look absolutely nothing like the active.” The progesterone pills were stamped with identifying marks; the placebo was not. The research coordinator handling the pills was not blinded. Creinin acknowledged all of this in private, writing in an email to his team: “Guess this is pseudo-blinded.”

Despite that, he described the study as double-blind in the published paper itself, and testified in court that blinding was never a concern.

2. His Private Estimates on Mifepristone-Only Efficacy Undermine His Theory—So He Left Them Out

Creinin’s central argument against APR is that the “continuing pregnancies” seen in reversal data aren’t evidence that progesterone works—they’re simply pregnancies that would have survived mifepristone on their own. If that’s true, the continuing pregnancy rate after mifepristone alone should be high enough to account for the results.

But in an unpublished peer-review response shown in court, Creinin privately estimated that the continuing pregnancy rate after mifepristone alone is “most likely just 8 percent.” He then kept that figure out of his published article, noting he’d “prefer not to bring it up.”  

The problem is obvious: if only 8% of pregnancies continue after mifepristone alone, then the significantly higher continuation rates seen in APR data cannot be explained by mifepristone failure—progesterone is clearly doing something. And Creinin's own private words reveal he thinks that’s more likely than he’s publicly said.

3. His Published Study Wrongly Characterized APR Recipient as Suffering “Severe Hemorrhage”

Creinin’s study listed three women as experiencing “severe hemorrhage”—Subjects 8, 10, and 11. Subject 8 was the only one in the progesterone group, making her the linchpin of any argument that APR causes dangerous bleeding.  

But evidence presented in court by Thomas More Society attorneys told a different story. Her hospital chart listed her chief complaint as “vaginal bleeding minor,” her diagnosis was spontaneous abortion without complication, and she was never diagnosed with hemorrhage by the hospital. Creinin’s own clinical note describes her bleeding as “mild to moderate.” She needed no transfusion, no aspiration, no intervention at all—unlike Subject 11, who was in the placebo group and actually required a blood transfusion. The bleeding was consistent with what is routinely expected from the abortion pill regimen.  

If Subject 8 never actually experienced a severe hemorrhage, as this evidence shows, then Creinin’s own study data shows zero severe hemorrhages in the APR group and, ironically, provides evidence that APR is safer than its critics claim.

4. He Admitted No Component of APR Is Known to Cause Birth Defects

The AG’s complaint calls it “misleading” for Heartbeat to tell women that the birth defect rate after APR is “less than or equal to the rate in the general population,” claiming there is “no credible support” for the statement.  

But under oath, the AG’s own expert confirmed that mifepristone is not known to cause birth defects, progesterone is not known to cause birth defects, and there is no evidence that any component of the APR protocol causes birth defects. His own study’s consent form told participants the same thing: “The two drugs used in this study, mifepristone and progesterone, are not known to cause birth defects.” The AG says there’s no credible support for the claim. The AG’s own expert—and his own consent form—say otherwise.

5. He Can’t Say APR Doesn’t Work—and He Can’t Say It’s Unsafe

After two days of cross-examination, Jonna closed with two questions. Can you swear under oath that APR does not work? “No.” Can you swear under oath that it’s unsafe? “Qualified, no.”

The State’s own expert, after years of publicly opposing APR, could not tell the court that it doesn’t work or that it's unsafe. The AG brought Dr. Creinin to close the door on Abortion Pill Reversal. Under cross-examination, the record he brought with him opened it wider.

6. He Can’t Back Up the AG’s “Safer Than Tylenol” Claim

The AG’s complaint asserts that chemical abortion is “safer than penicillin, Viagra and even some over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol.” The State’s own expert couldn’t agree with that claim under oath.  

To not directly contradict it either, he dodged, arguing that the drugs serve different purposes and can't be compared. If the comparison doesn’t hold up, it shouldn’t be in the Attorney General’s complaint.

7. His Published Study Incorrectly Reports a Patient Arrived by Ambulance—and He’s Never Corrected It

In the 2020 UC Davis study, Creinin reported that Subject 10 was transported to the hospital by ambulance. Hospital records show she walked in on her own. When presented with the records at his October 2025 deposition, he acknowledged the error. Eight months later, at trial, he confirmed he had taken no steps to correct the published record.

8. The Attorney General Had Access to the Largest APR Safety Dataset—and Their Expert Never Reviewed It

Heartbeat International released its full deidentified dataset—8,800 patient entries—to the Attorney General during the litigation. Creinin, the AG’s own expert, never reviewed it. The data showed that out of 8,800 cases, only three women needed transfusions (and two of those hadn’t taken their progesterone), or that there were just 11 hospital admissions and 88 ER visits. When asked whether that data, if accurate, would help show APR is safe, Creinin conceded: “If the data was true, yes.”

9. He’s Been Cited by the Federal Government for Research Violations

A 2002 HHS warning letter cited Creinin for failing to obtain proper informed consent from study participants, failing to follow the investigational plan, and failing to maintain complete and accurate records. He confirmed these warnings under oath.

10. He Believes the World Needs More Abortions to Survive

Near the end of cross-examination, the court heard about Creinin’s broader worldview. He co-authored a 2020 paper in the journal Contraception that explicitly builds on Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb—the 1968 book widely regarded as a foundational text of the modern population-control movement. The paper praises Ehrlich’s warnings about "unchecked population growth" and adopts his environmental-impact formula to argue that population reduction is the key variable.  

Creinin and his co-author write that “family planning”—their term for abortion and contraception—is “the most humane and viable strategy for human survival,” that “both rich and poor nations have a responsibility to limit family size,” and that the world “cannot sustain … high fertility in poor nations.” To achieve this, they argue countries must make abortion widely available. These are not the views of a disinterested scientist—they place the AG’s expert squarely within an ideological tradition that has long advocated population control in developing nations through expanded abortion access.