Is The Ban On RU 486 Causing U.S. Research Efforts To Suffer?

Fearing that the publicity surrounding RU 486, the French-made abortion-inducing pill that is now available throughout Europe, would create a demand in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration issued an import ban on the drug in June 1989. Agency officials argued that women in the U.S. might put themselves at risk if they used this non-FDA-approved drug to terminate their own pregnancies. Today, as a result of the ban, RU 486 supplies in the U.S., even for basic research purposes, ar

Written byRobin Eisner

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For the antiabortion forces, this was a great victory. For abortion rights activists, it represented a defeat, which they are now trying to reverse. In addition, some constituencies outside of the abortion rights battlefield claim to be suffering as a result of the import prohibition. They are patients with cancer and Cushing's disease, among other disorders, whose health, in preliminary clinical studies, has been shown to improve with use of RU 486.

While Congress ponders passing legislation to rescind the import ban (see Commentary, page 12), scientists are debating with supporters of the ban the potential scientific advantages of RU 486, apart from its application as an abortifacient. Yet even in this discussion, the two sides seem inevitably to be drawn back to this inflammatory subject. The following two essays point out the issues of contention between the two factions. In one essay, William Regelson, a physician and professor of ...

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