This Could Be Abortion Pill’s Battleground

Initially, the scene looks like any other political boogie in a dull election year: Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, running for governor, stands up and says he wants the drug RU 486 tested in California. OK, John. RU 486 is the abortion pill and this move just might drain some of the female vote away from front-runner Dianne Feinstein.

As a maneuver, it has a weary quality. The manufacturer of RU 486, the French drug company Roussel Uclaf, hasn’t even applied for a license to test its product and shows no signs of wanting to do so. On the face of it, RU 486 seems to be an issue so vaporous that its only utility lies in the realm of the purely political.

But there is an axiom in politics known as the law of unintended consequences. If you’ve been driving the freeways in the last day and happened to spin the radio dial to the talk shows, you might have noticed this law in action. All you heard on the radio was RU 486. Except the call-in people weren’t talking about Dianne or John or who won the boogie. They were talking about the drug.

There’s a reason for this. RU 486 is one of those rare drugs, like the birth control pill, that represents a great leap from the past and has the power to change the human condition. It would make surgical procedures obsolete for most abortions. It would mean the decision to terminate a pregnancy would be carried out at home, not a hospital or a clinic, and therefore would be cloaked in a privacy heretofore unavailable.

Those virtues also make the drug intensely political in the grandest sense. Put simply, RU 486 could cripple the movement to stop abortions. If clinics and hospitals no longer serve as the centers of abortions, who does the movement attack? Where do the true believers go to lay down their bodies?

There is an easy answer to that question: they attack the drug company that sells RU 486. In fear of that response, Roussel Uclaf has declined any attempt to market the drug in this country. From a business standpoint, the risk of a company-wide boycott has outweighed the profit potential of a single drug.

Of course, these calculations are tricky and subject to revision. What if Roussel Uclaf, or another company, could limit its risk by marketing RU 486 in one state only, rather than taking on the whole country? And what if that state is California, with a relatively low Catholic population and a liberal attitude toward new products that promise a better life?

That’s exactly the situation we have here. When Van de Kamp brought up RU 486, he was suggesting that we take advantage of California’s unique position in drug testing. California alone operates a program where the state can approve drugs without the prior consent of the federal government. The single proviso is that such drugs be manufactured and sold within the state’s borders.

Aside from politics, the advantages of a test here are obvious. RU 486 carries the promise of lower risk during abortion because it does not involve an invasive procedure. It acts by blocking absorption of the hormone progesterone and may also be effective in use against breast cancer and endometriosis, one of the leading causes of infertility in women.

Of course, before any of this comes about some drug company must be willing to take the risk. A year ago, or even six months ago, that prospect was regarded as non-existent.

It still remains faint, but times are changing fast. In one of the great political ironies, the rollback of Roe vs. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court last year marked the revival of pro-choice sentiment. All three of our major gubernatorial candidates support the notion that a woman has the right to make the abortion decision for herself. And the very fact that Van de Kamp believes he can get some mileage out of an aggressive pro-choice stand is a measure of where he thinks the momentum lies.

At some point, and maybe it’s not so distant, that shift could become pronounced enough that one or another drug company will decide the profit potential is worth the risk. And then we might see a quiet application for testing.

What then? It’s probably safe to predict that California would become the nexus of a new phase in the abortion war. A struggle that involves technology and morality all at once, a Brave-New-World kind of struggle.

After all, isn’t that why God made California? So bring it on. This is a matter of destiny.