The Drug's Only Real Use Is To Kill Unborn Babies

On April 10, 1991, just five days after New York Mayor David Dinkins proclaimed his unqualified support for testing and marketing of the French abortion pill, RU 486, in the United States, medical authorities in France announced the first confirmed death associated with the drug. Two other women had earlier suffered life-threatening heart attacks and survived. Sensing the public-relations disaster, proponents quickly announced that the fault was not with RU 486 itself, but rather with the prostaglandin Nalador (sulprostone). The French use RU 486 with the prostaglandin to increase its "effectiveness." Indeed, no sooner did these tragic events become public than Etienne Emile Baulieu, the prime promoter of the abortifacient, announced that he had successfully conducted tests using not Nalador, but Cytotec, a prostaglandin manufactured by the U.S. company Searle & Co. of Chicago. As reported in the New York Times on April 9, 1991, we were told this prostaglandin resulted in faster abortions, less pain to women, and so on. The implication was clear: Full speed ahead, the prostaglandin problem has been solved. Baulieu's attempt to short-circuit a reevaluation of the safety of RU 486 abortion technology is illustrative of an ongoing strategy by proponents of the drug. First, announce that there is no danger to using RU 486. Second, when problems arise, blame them on something -anything else. But the reality is far more grim than the public has been led to believe. The truth is suddenly beginning to sink in: Not only is the prostaglandin used to boost RU 486's success rate from 80 percent to 90 percent dangerous to women, but RU 486 itself also poses major dangers. In October 1990, an RU 486 supporter, Meredeth Turshen, associate professor of community health at Rutgers University, described bleeding and incomplete abortions from the RU 486 technique in her report on the first research studies conducted independently of the manufacturer. She explained at the American Public Health Association's annual meeting last year that the "failure rate" was 10 percent (and rising)--more than twice as high as the figures given by the company. Other "problems are pain, bleeding for one to two months, hemorrhaging, and nonexpulsion of the placenta," she said. But Turshen's remarks drew no attention, except in American Medical News [Oct. 26, 1990, page 8]. It was not until July 1991 that criticism coming from outside the pro-life community surfaced in a major way. The source was Vogue magazine, which ran a powerful article written from a proabortion feminist perspective, offering a blistering critique of RU 486. Evidently, the immediate inspiration was a forthcoming 100-page report compiled by the Institute of Women and Technology, a feminist think tank at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The core of the feminist case against RU 486 parallels virtually point-by-point the criticisms made by the National Right to Life Committee for the past five years. For example, wrote author Susan Ince in Vogue, the RU 486 technique is anything but private. In France, a woman routinely makes four visits to the abortion facility. And, contrary to the assurance of both popular accounts and medical journal articles, even the tests conducted by RU 486 proponents have revealed a number of serious complications. In England, in addition to the usual vomiting and diarrhea associated with ingestion of the drug, the pain was so intense that 270 of 950 women in the test required narcotics, while another 280 used less-potent painkillers. In addition, because the technique has a very limited applicability--it can only be used five to seven weeks after onset of the woman's last menstrual period--and a very limited population (that is, women who monitor themselves virtually on a daily basis for signs of pregnancy and hustle in for an abortion), Baulieu's claim made in the early 1980s that RU 486 would replace all surgical abortions up through the 10th week has proved untrue. With all these very serious shortcomings, it is not at all surprising that proponents of the drug are trying to convince the media, Congress, and the medical establishment that there are a host of "therapeutic" uses outside of abortion for RU 486. There are no research data to date demonstrating that RU 486 has any other proven use than to kill unborn babies. Even the American Medical Association, which has advocated the use of RU 486 for research, characterized the claims about nonabortion uses as "published conjecture." Moreover, proponents keep telling the media that pro-lifers oppose research using RU 486 in nonabortion contexts. That is absolutely false. Our objection is to its use as an abortion method. The feminist critique as presaged in the Vogue article makes several additional points on the nonabortion-use issue that objective observers must take into account. To begin with, if RU 486 is to have any effect on, say, breast cancer, it will do so through its anticorticoid properties. However, there are a number of ominous side effects that may be associated with repeated use of a drug with such far-reaching effects. Janice Raymond, the coauthor of the MIT study, "suspects that some of the quirkier RU 486 side effects that show up in the medical literature--extreme thirst, fainting, mood changes, fatigue--may be related to RU 486's effect on the adrenal and pituitary glands," according to the Vogue article. The abortion pill itself is dangerous, for, after all, it is a very powerful artificial steroid, and the considerable dangers are compounded by the use of the prostaglandin. It is worth remembering that at one time, prostaglandins were widely used alone to cause second-trimester abortions. Their frequent use ended when physicians realized the dangerous side effects and the physical and mental pain often inflicted on women. Responsible scientists should take their cue from the widespread complications, the deaths, and the massive postabortion trauma associated with RU 486's use. Edouard Sakiz, president of Roussel Uclaf, admitted in an interview last August with the French newspaper Le Monde that the two-step RU 486 abortion technique is "an appalling psychological ordeal." It is understandable that Congress can be snowed by inflated claims and cajoled by proabortion lobbyists. But it is inexcusable for the scientific community to allow itself to be used by organizations whose real agenda is the promotion of abortion and whose "concern" for the lives and health of women takes a back seat to their ideology. Wanda Franz is a professor of child psychology at West Virginia University in Morgantown and is president of the National Right to Life Committee.

The Drug's Only Real Use Is To Kill Unborn Babies

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