RU486 Advocates See Private Abortion Techniques Quieting the Public Debate

With trials of the French abortion pill RU486 about to begin in the United States, a shift can already be perceived in the divisive debate over a woman’s right to abortion.

Abortion rights advocates hail the transition to more private forms of abortion that the pill provides. But anti-abortion activists, who are in danger of losing their ability to impede abortions by blockading clinics, already are expanding the battleground to foreign embassies and pharmaceutical companies. Economic boycotts and picketing of corporate executives’ homes are sure to follow, they say.

Activists on both sides point to the scene outside the French Embassy in Washington on a recent sweltering afternoon as an indication of things to come. Members of the Feminist Majority Foundation and Operation Rescue toted signs and traded chants in an effort to attract the attention of passersby, the media and the French government, which was the first to license the drug for manufacture and sale.

The scene was repeated at French consulates in at least nine other cities that day, just three days before the French manufacturer, Roussel-Uclaf, held its annual stockholder’s meeting.

“This is just the start,” promised Rev. Patrick Mahoney, spokesman for Operation Rescue. “Our economic boycott of the French is beginning right now, and we will try to make an end run around the President and convince Roussel-Uclaf that America will not accept RU486.”

But Kathy Spillar, national coordinator of the Feminist Majority Foundation, predicts that the campaign against RU486 will be short-lived.

“What they’re trying to do is to create a sense that there is a lot of controversy to get the pharmaceutical companies to back away, but there isn’t,” Spillar said.

BACKGROUND: Developed in France in the early 1980s, RU486 can be used to induce an abortion non-surgically during the first nine weeks of pregnancy. Already licensed in France, Sweden and Britain, the drug has been used successfully by more than 120,000 women. Testing is under way to determine whether it is safe and effective in the treatment of breast cancer and several other diseases.

A recent study promises that RU486 will become even easier and cheaper to use. While it previously had to be given along with an injection of prostaglandin (a hormone-like fatty acid), it is now as effective when taken with a prostaglandin pill.

The George Bush Administration had prohibited the drug’s use for abortion in the United States, but President Clinton and Food and Drug Administration chief David A. Kessler have urged its U.S. testing as soon as possible.

Roussel-Uclaf, fearing opposition from anti-abortion groups, has agreed to provide RU486 to the nonprofit U.S. Population Council for testing on 2,000 women. But the company so far has refused to agree to sell the drug in the United States once it is approved.

The Population Council is seeking an American pharmaceutical company to manufacture the drug, meaning that it is likely to be three to five years before RU486 is available for widespread use.

OUTLOOK: No one claims that RU486 will end the need for surgical abortions, and abortion rights groups believe they will have to continue to protect women’s clinics from protesters.

But the importance of RU486 is that it “moves one step closer to removing the debate from the public forum,” emphasized Rosemary Dempsey, national vice president for the National Organization for Women. “It is the beginning of a whole new age for women.”

And it is something anti-abortion groups pledge to stop. “We will not sit idly by watching the drug get approved,” vowed Craig Sadick, government affairs counsel for the American Life League.