Just One Chapter in a Book : Current ‘abortion pill’ dispute isn’t the issue--Washington’s dogmatism is

Leona Benten should not have ever had to go to court. Much has been made of the character of the San Francisco Bay Area woman who--six weeks pregnant--challenged the U.S. government’s ban on the importation of the French abortion pill, RU-486. Much has been made as well of the provocative political tactics of Abortion Rights Mobilization, the group that paid for Benten’s trip abroad to obtain the pills and then set the stage for their seizure by Customs Service agents when she landed in New York July 1.

Following the Supreme Court’s denial Friday of her emergency plea specifically for the return of her pills, Benten hopes that a lower court will hear her class-action challenge to the ban’s legitimacy on behalf of other women who may want to import RU-486 for their own use.

We hope so, too. The real issue here is neither Benten nor the tactics of those who engineered her court case. The issue is whether the Bush Administration’s ban on the drug is justified, whether the government treats this unlicensed drug differently from other unlicensed drugs simply because it is an abortifacient.

It does. The Food and Drug Administration subjects RU-486 to special restrictions. Approved for use as an abortifacient in France and Britain, RU-486 is being used safely under tight controls. Proponents argue that it is safer than surgical abortion. But anti-abortion forces, fearful that its use in this country would undermine their cause, pressured the FDA in 1989 to block importation of personal quantities of the drug--like the dose Benten carried.

Yet some unlicensed drugs that may have value in treating serious diseases for which there are no cures are not so restricted. RU-486 has shown great promise in treating diseases including some advanced breast cancers that have not responded to traditional chemotherapy.

The FDA “import alert” does not legally restrict clinical testing of RU-486. But the drug’s French manufacturer, Roussel-Uclaf, now refuses to provide scientists with supplies of the pills, fearing a consumer boycott of its other products by American anti-abortion groups. As a result, scientists cannot complete the clinical trials necessary for FDA licensing of RU-486.

A Catch-22? Absolutely. One that, sadly, traps many American women.