RU 486/prostaglandin threats to safe pregnancy termination.

Synopsis–Women’s right to safe and legal abortion is under threat worldwide. News of the French abortion pill, RU 486, which is touted by its promoters as safe, quick, and easy with the control in women’s hands, seems like the much awaited panacea to change the abortion debate. However, in this paper we dispute that chemical abortion is the answer to women’s demand for hassle-free and safe abortion. Instead we posit that RU 486 has been falsely promoted and elaborate on the contrived nature of its administration: (a) 3-5 visits to a licensed abortion clinic spread over 2 weeks; (b) the fact that RU 486 has a 20-40% failure rate that necessitates the addition of a second drug, prostaglandin, to bring it up to a 93-94% success rate (still considerably less than the 99% of conventional abortion); the small number of women who can use it (an extremely large number of contraindictions and only usable up to a 49-day pregnancy after a woman’s last period); the many short-term effects (e.g., emergency bleeding, sometimes necessitating blood transfusions, and cardiovascular problems, which have already led to the death of a French woman in April 1991 [Alt-man, 1991]); and the unknown long-term effects due to the drugs’ action on the womb, the ovary, the adrenal glands, the brain, and also the developing embryo. We suggest that RU 486/prostaglan-din abortion is ill conceived and dangerous for women’s health and self determination, and that particularly its introduction into so-called developing countries could have disastrous consequences. We conclude that RU 486/prostaglandin abortion is far from being an abortion “miracle.” In fact, it might lead to a further erosion of existing abortion services because it makes it easier/cheaper for the doctors and the state–but not for women. Promoting chemical abortion may thus unwittingly contribute to closing down women’s abortion choices rather than expanding them.