RU-486 ---- Sunny Rhetoric vs. Bloody Reality
(excerpts)
By Charmaine Crouse Yoest
How many times will women be used as guinea pigs? We should have learned some
lessons from the Dalkon Shield, DES and maybe even breast implants.
Abortion advocates keep telling American women that RU-486 is "safe and
effective" - and both foes and supporters of abortion argue that the abortion
procedure is "easy." Yet all these claims are open to serious question.
Just how safe is the RU-486 abortion? It has killed at least one woman in
France. In that case, the young woman was dead within an hour after receiving
the prostaglandin injection that is the final stage of the four-step RU-486
regime. Abortion advocates keep claiming that RU-486 itself didn't kill her; it
was the prostaglandin in the fourth step. That may be true, but it's not
particularly relevant. RU-486 abortions without prostaglandin just don't happen.
As a result of that death, smokers and women over age 34 may not take RU-486
in France. Additionally, women are advised not to take the drug if they have any
of the following very common conditions: high blood pressure, anemia,
gynecologic infections and fibroids.
However, we don't really know just how dangerous RU-486 is. In one of the
major studies of women using the drug, published in the New England Journal of
Medicine, 75 of the 2,115 women in the study were not followed after receiving
the final injection. Did any of them suffer severe, or fatal complications? We
simply don't know.
The record does show that RU-486 has also been responsible for two nonfatal
heart attacks. And according to Roussel's own data, out of 950 women studied,
270 required narcotics for intense pain. Seven required blood transfusions.
Janice Raymond, associate director of the MlT-based Institute on Women and
Technology--and a bona-fide abortion supporter--is opposing the drug after a
through review of the scientific literature on RU-486.
So, at best, the jury is still out on "safe.'' Is the RU-486 regime
"effective"? To a degree. But in the one out of 20 times that the unborn child
is not killed, its deformities are so severe that Roussel-Uclaf, fearing
litigation, requires women to sign an agreement to a surgical abortion. What if
a woman changes her mind after taking the first dose of RU-486? Will she be
forced, Chinese-style, into a surgical abortion?
The RU-486/prostaglandin regime effectively completes an abortion through
inducing the contractions and hemorrhage that expel the unborn child. Supporters
of the drug rhapsodize about the increased "privacy" of "taking the pill at
home." But they are glossing over the reality that women are administered the
drug in a clinic and then sent home to wait as the bleeding begins. The [former]
president of Roussel Uclaf, Edouard Sakiz, says it is "an appalling
psychological ordeal." In Europe there are support groups for women who have
endured the procedure.
This raises the issue of informed consent. When a woman comes to participate
in the field trials, having heard in the media that RU-486 is easy, will she be
told about the side effects and that MlT's Ms. Raymond has questioned the impact
of RU-486 on her health? Will she know what she is getting into before it is too
late?
It is very troubling that the groups that will be administering an
experimental abortion drug with serious potential side effects are the same ones
that have demonstrated their opposition to woman's right to know all the
information about surgical abortion. Pro-abortion groups have fought informed
consent laws all the way to the Supreme Court.
And what about parental consent? Will 14-year-old girls be given RU-486 arid
sent home to hemorrhage without their parents' knowing anything about it? All
too often, parents are not informed of their daughters' surgical abortions.
Surgical abortion is legal and accessible in the U.S. And, contrary to the
hyperbolic pro-abortion rhetoric, RU-486 -- with its mandatory four doctor
visits-- is not easier and more private than surgical abortion. It's odd that
the same people who say that a 24-hour wait to see a doctor for a surgical
abortion is absolutely unacceptable would be promoting chemical abortion, which
in its current state is a much more drawn out procedure. Shouldn't we be asking
why this questionable drug is so important to them? And to the president?
Quick. Name something the president has done to address breast cancer, a
disease that attacks one out of nine women. Name just one other drug for which
the president has personally lobbied. What's going on here? Is it women's rights
and women's health the president is concerned about or just abortion at any
cost?
Ms. Yoest is an adjunct fellow with the Family Research Council and a fellow
in the department of government at the University of Virginia.
