Doctor Who Claims Medical Abortions Can Be 'Reversed' Reportedly Lied About His Credentials For Years

George Delgado, the anti-abortion doctor who has for years tried to make “abortion reversal” a legitimate medical practice despite essentially no evidence that it works, has “for years falsely claimed an affiliation to a prestigious U.S. medical school,” as revealed in a new report by the Guardian. I am shocked that a man who is trying to peddle a discredited anti-abortion procedure that essentially lies to his patients would also lie about his credentials. Who would have ever thought?

According to the Guardian, Delgado, who is currently the medical director of the “Christ-centered” Culture of Life Family Services clinics in San Diego, has listed that he continues to teach at the University of California San Diego’s School of Medicine, and continued to do so despite requests from the university to stop doing so last year. While he did serve as an unpaid volunteer professor beginning in 2005, he left that position in 2011, and his duties likely amounted to “as little as teaching a class once a year,” according to a university spokesperson.

More from the Guardian:

Delgado appears to have listed an affiliation with USCD since 2011, including in a December 2012 case report published in the Annals of Pharmacotherapy, and as recently as November 2018 in a speaker biography posted on the website Catholic Answers. That affiliation listed on Catholic Answers was removed after inquiries from the Guardian.

The anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute website also listed Delgado as a “Voluntary Associate Clinical Professor at the UCSD School of Medicine” at the time of publication. He is not, three university officials said.

At publication time, Delgado’s bio on the Charlotte Lozier Institute website continues to state that “Dr. Delgado is a Voluntary Associate Clinical Professor at the UCSD School of Medicine.” Delgado is chalking this up to a misunderstanding, writing in an email to the Guardian, “As soon as I received a copy of the letter from [University of California San Diego] I stopped listing an affiliation with UCSD,” adding that websites still listing the affiliation “must be using old quotes in their materials.”

A perhaps more alarming fact is that the religious clinics where Delgado works, which proudly advertise that their “mission includes access to Abortion Pill Reversal for women who have regret after starting a medication-induced abortion,” are now angling for Title X federal family planning funds.

Per the Guardian:

The Culture of Life Family Services clinics in Escondido and San Diego, California, were included in successful applications for federal family planning funding approved by the Trump administration. The two clinics were listed as “sub-recipients” in a $5.9m grant proposal submitted to the Trump administration by the Obria Group. Obria would later be awarded $1.7m per year.

When reached by the Guardian, the Obria Group told them that the Culture of Life Family Services clinics did not ultimately make it onto the final list of their subgrantees, and that so-called “abortion reversal” is “not reimbursable in the Title X program.”

Still, that, and the fact that Republican-led state legislatures around the country are successfully passing laws requiring abortion providers to tell people that a medical abortion can be reversed, shows that anti-abortion doctors like Delgado are continuing to gain traction.