CALIFORNIA IN BRIEF : ANAHEIM : CMA Backs Tests of Abortion Pill

Delegates to the California Medical Assn. convention in Anaheim approved a resolution supporting the research and testing of a controversial pill that can induce abortions. Doctors who led the drive contended the vote was a first step by the nation’s doctors to counter political pressure by abortion foes and persuade the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to study RU-486, or mifepristone. The drug was developed in 1986 by a French firm, Roussel-Uclaf, and has been used in France. But Edward Norton, a spokesman for the drug manufacturer’s U.S. subsidiary, Hoechst-Roussel Pharmaceuticals of Somerville, N.J., said the firm had no plans to make or market the drug. “We’ve been petitioned, we’ve been yelled at and we’ve been telephoned by everybody” across the spectrum of the abortion issue, Norton said. “But our formal position hasn’t changed in two years and I don’t expect it to change.”