Group Says Upjohn Plans Abortion Drug, Calls for Boycott of Firm
An anti-abortion group charged Wednesday that the Upjohn Co. plans to market a suppository that women could use to give themselves abortions early in a pregnancy, but the drug firm denied it.
Dr. John C. Willke, president of the National Right to Life Committee, called for a boycott of Upjohn products because, he said, the company planned to market a prostaglandin suppository that could be inserted in a woman’s vagina to induce an abortion during the first three months of pregnancy.
In a statement, Upjohn said that “the basis for the boycott is erroneous. The company has informed right-to-life groups repeatedly that it is not developing, nor does it intend to market, any product to be used for first-trimester or do-it-yourself abortions.”
Although Upjohn officials have told him that the suppository would only be used to open the uterus for surgery, Willke, a physician, said that “we are very, very concerned” it could be used to induce abortions.
If a woman were given a series of suppositories over several hours, abortion would be induced, he said.
Once approved for a very narrow use, Willke said, a drug can be used by physicians for a different purpose.
But Elizabeth L. Clark, a spokeswoman at Upjohn’s headquarters in Kalamazoo, Mich., said that the company plans to seek government approval only for a suppository that would dilate a woman’s cervix to make it easier for doctors to perform surgery in the uterus.
“It’s not going to be labeled for abortions,” she said. “It will not be used for first-trimester abortions and we have told that point-blank to Dr. Willke,” Clark said.
She conceded that the suppository could be used by doctors to prepare a woman for an abortion in a hospital.
Like other prostaglandin products the company makes, “it will not be available except to approved hospital pharmacies,” she said.
“It doesn’t make sense . . . that it would somehow get out in the stream of commerce” and be misused by women to give themselves abortions, she said.
The product has not been submitted for approval to the Food and Drug Administration.
