NONFICTION - May 5, 1991

RU 486: The Pill That Could End the Abortion Wars and Why American Women Don’t Have It by Lawrence Lader (Addison-Wesley: $16.95; 144 pp.) . This is advocacy journalism, no two ways about it: Lader is the founding chair of the National Abortion Rights Action League and his nine books include a biography of birth control activist Margaret Sanger. So it is all the more to Lader’s credit that he presents a measured, convincing argument for what we in this country know as the “French abortion pill”--RU 486, which in 96% of cases successfully induces abortion before the ninth week of pregnancy, without side effects and with increased privacy for the pregnant woman. This is more than diatribe--Lader grounds his point of view in research about the men who discovered the pill, the resistance they’ve faced around the world, and the obstacles posed by the FDA and the U.S. government today.