RU-486 Decision a Milestone in Abortion Rights Effort

A decade after the controversial abortion pill RU-486 was first available to European women, it finally will be a proper option for Americans. Lamentably, the pill is unlikely to diminish the heat that infuses the politics of abortion. Americans remain irreconcilably divided on this issue, as evidenced by Thursday’s House vote to override the president’s veto of a bill outlawing late-term abortion.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Wednesday that it is satisfied RU-486 is safe and effective and that it intends to approve the pill for use as an abortificient. Physicians should be able to prescribe RU-486 by the middle of next year, after the marketers comply with FDA orders concerning labeling and manufacturing information.

RU-486 is actually two drugs that together induce a miscarriage. The agency will require that the combination be prescribed by a physician and administered in a doctor’s office over a period of two days.

For abortion rights supporters, RU-486’s approval is welcome news. Women with unwanted pregnancies have been reluctant figures in a long, escalating and sometimes violent struggle, first over the legality of abortion and now over its availability. Abortion rights groups have largely won the legal battles, culminating in the Supreme Court’s 1994 reaffirmation that a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy is constitutionally protected.

But at the same time, abortion rights supporters lost ground as opposition pressures made abortions increasingly unavailable. Protests intimidated physicians and nurses into closing clinics that performed the procedure along with a range of medical services. Fear of similar protests has caused many teaching hospitals to discontinue training in surgical abortion techniques, meaning a growing number of gynecologists do not know how to perform one.

RU-486 could dramatically change that dynamic, making abortion more accessible. Physicians will no longer need special surgical training. And since the procedure can be done in any doctor’s office, patients may reclaim some of the privacy they deserve and are granted for any other medical procedure.

Far from making abortion available “on demand,” as abortion foes have long feared, the new drug could instead make the difficult choice to terminate a pregnancy what the U.S. Supreme Court has said it should be: a deeply personal decision by a woman and her doctor.