RU-486: THE ABORTION BATTLE’S NEW FRONTIER : ABORTION PILL DEBATE AND ISSUES, ANSWERS
Shouldn’t we be concerned about unknown, long-term side effects of RU-486?
“We’ve had some fairly horrendous experiences with drugs that have been represented as perfectly safe, but 20 or 30 years later, we discover they’re lethal. DES resulted in a significant number of vaginal cancers in daughters of women who were given the drug. The Dalkon Shield was assured to be an entirely safe product which could be used with abandon. The history of medicine is littered with this kind of reassurance, with the debris of treatments and drugs which we have been promised are safe and effective and later we discovered they waxed and waned from serious to fatal.”
--Dr. Bernard Nathanson, assistant clinical professor, dept. of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Cornell University Medical College
“There were some deaths from early birth control pills. The complications were so rare they couldn’t be found in pre-marketing studies. You can never evaluate a drug in a vacuum. But on balance, contraceptives saved many women’s lives; child-bearing can be dangerous. In terms of public health, the birth control pill has been one of the resounding success stories. “There was never any scientific evidence that DES was efficacious. The Dalkon Shield wasn’t subjected to FDA scrutiny. Back then you could market a device without any governmental regulation. We have to hold to a higher standard of research. We know a lot about RU-486. It’s a circular argument to say we don’t know anyting about this drug, so let’s not study it.”
--Dr. David Grimes, professor, depts. of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Preventive Medicine, USC School of Medicine
Is it possible that RU-486 may yet prove to affect different women in different ways?
“We know that in America, black women experience significantly more uterine fibroids than white women. For some women, that’s the most common reason for a hysterectomy. We’re also concerned about the higher incidence of diabetes in native American women. Both of these things have links to the natural hormonal systems in the body. What happens five years later to women who’ve used RU-486? Are they having more trouble with fibroids? Are they likely to have diabetes? These are questions we just don’t have the answers to.”
--Cindy Pearson, program director, National Women’s Health Network
“We won’t have answers to those questions until we have long, post-marketing surveillance. But there’s no reason to believe these things would be a problem especially from single-dose administration. In our studies with white, Hispanic, black, and Asian women, we didn’t find any racial differences and there is no reason to suspect there would be. The suggestion that different women metabolize the steroid in different ways has not been shown, at least not by race.”
--Grimes
What will happen if women take RU-486 and fail to abort?
“RU-486 will cause severe fetal deformity in babies where the pill failed and they’re brought to term. This is a poisonous steroid, given at the very time when the organs and limbs are forming.”
--Dr. John Willke, president of the National Right to Life Committee
“When RU-486 fails, a standard suction abortion is performed. Once one has started an abortion, one should finish an abortion. Interrupting any abortion method could have adverse effects.”
--Grimes
Is RU-486 safe for women in Third World countries where no medical backup may exist?
“RU-486 will kill thousands of women in Third World countries from bleeding. In the (French) study reported recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, one woman out of 100 bled so badly and so long, she had to have a D and C, a surgical scraping of the womb. One went so far as needing a transfusion. In a sophisticated climate like France, where this is tightly controlled, that’s the experience. That will not be the experience in a Third World country. In a village, there will be no doctor and very often no nurse. Nothing but a health care worker who hands out the pills.”
--Willke
“This drug, if anything, would reduce the number of women who die from complications of illegal abortion dramatically. To say that thousands of women in Third World countries will die from bleeding assumes there would be no back-up if the pill failed. Five thousand people per year die from botched abortions in Bangladesh alone. Given the alternative of having a stick stuck in your uterus, I think RU-486 is preferable.”
--Grimes
What about the argument that RU-486 is high-tech murder?
“RU-486 kills a living human being after her heart has begun to beat.”
--Willke
“I think few people would consider an embryo a human being. The difference is like destroying an architect’s set of blueprints versus destroying a building.”
--Grimes
