Legislature Offers N.H. as Site of Abortion Drug Test : Medicine: Governor opposes ending pregnancy, but his approval is not needed on the resolution, which does not change state anti-abortion law.

The Legislature in the normally conservative state of New Hampshire, where a 19th-Century law still makes abortion a felony, on Thursday adopted a resolution offering the state as the nation’s first clinical testing site for the French abortion drug RU-486.

A 13-9 vote of approval Thursday in the 24-member state Senate followed an 80-vote margin in favor of the RU-486 measure on March 20 in the heavily Republican, 400-member state House of Representatives.

The resolution does not carry the strength of law and does not require the signature of Republican Gov. Judd Gregg, a vociferous opponent of abortion rights.

But state Sen. Susan McLane, the Republican chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, hailed the action as an important symbolic victory that “sends a message” to other states and to the Food and Drug Administration.

The FDA bars individuals from bringing the drug into the country for their own use. Before 1989, the agency granted about a dozen permits for testing of the drug in this country. But in congressional testimony last fall, some scientists said that because of the ban on individual importation of RU-486 and because the FDA had not granted new research permits since 1989, the drug’s manufacturer had become hesitant to provide RU-486 to researchers in the United States.

RU-486 is manufactured by Roussel-Uclaf, a French drug company that is a subsidiary of Hoechst, a German pharmaceutical conglomerate. Although best known as a synthetic steroid that has been used by many French women to induce abortions, RU-486 is also undergoing tests in this country and in Europe for possible use against breast cancer, AIDS and Cushing’s syndrome, a rare endocrine disorder.

But Kathleen Souza, the legislative director of the New Hampshire Right to Life Committee, said evidence that the drug is effective for such conditions is “specious at best.”

Souza blasted the New Hampshire Legislature’s action as “a vote to kill babies, pure and simple. It was not a vote for research, not a vote for cancer patients, AIDS patients or Cushing’s syndrome. It was a vote to kill babies.”

She lamented the measure as precedent-setting. “We’re first in the nation for more than the (presidential) primary now,” said Souza.

Nancy Myers of the National Right to Life Committee in Washington echoed Souza’s sentiments, labeling Thursday’s vote as “unfortunate, considering that the New Hampshire Legislature has in a move to score political points with pro-abortion groups symbolically risked the lives of women and unborn children.”

Conversely, Peg Dobbie, executive director of the New Hampshire affiliate of NARAL, the National Abortion Rights Action League, said the Legislature’s endorsement of the RU-486 bill showed that “the conservative Republican Legislature and citizenry are really strongly pro-choice because they don’t want the government to interfere with people’s lives.”