RU-486: A Very Dangerous Drug
by Denny Hartford
It was another case of ideology trumping both science and common sense when the U.S. Food and Drug and Administration approved the dangerous abortion drug RU-486 for general use. I say dangerous in both the most obvious sense (the preborn child is murdered by this chemical) but also because of the alarming effects the drug has had on expectant mothers. The medical case is quite clear detailing the damage done by the drug, including women dying. Why then did the FDA act in contradiction to the facts? Because like other agencies in our government, the FDA has allowed science to be taken captive by the radical left. Political correctness now drives the government bureaucracies and the social service agencies. So, whether the issue is women in combat, the acceptance of pedophilia by the American Psychiatric Association, embryonic stem cell experimentation or the various battlegrounds of “reproductive freedom,” clear and well-established truths are being ignored because of a stubborn loyalty to ideology.
The motive involved in approving RU-486 is to have the cake of the sexual revolution and to eat it too. This requires social engineers to eliminate the traditional norms connected with sexual activity: self-control, marriage and fidelity within the bonds of matrimony, pregnancy. RU-486 was initially introduced as a “morning after pill” but it proved so wildly inaccurate that such an approach had to be abandoned. The drug simply was not “effective” before the progesterone levels reached a critical threshold. The next move was to sell RU-486 as a “menstrual regulator”; that is, a pill which a woman could take regularly and never be aware that she might be aborting a pregnancy. That proved problematic also because it soon became evident that RU-486 produced a phenomenon in which a woman’s ovulatory and menstrual cycles became unlinked. This necessarily reduced the drug’s power to end the pregnancy.
So, what next? Dr. Etienne-Emile Baulieu, the discoverer of the drug, boasted that, despite these limitations, RU-486 would soon replace surgical abortions performed in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. But it was quickly seen that the drug did not work very well after the seventh week of pregnancy nor before the fourth. One more false claim demolished. And then there’s the alarming reality that RU-486 routinely requires “assistance” from prostaglandin drugs to complete the abortion. That means the mother frequently needs additional drugs to force the uterine convulsions in which to expel the (usually) dead baby.
This long list of failed intentions, as you can see, make RU-486 a far cry from the simple, stand-alone drug it is claimed to be.
It should be no surprise that the full story of RU-486 is being poorly covered by the world’s media. After all, most journalists are in agreement with the abortion enthusiasm which marks modern feminism. Journalists therefore accept without thinking the “junk science” defenses. If this was not the case, the press would have penetrated the RU-486 hype and informed us about such items as the following:
According to an international inquiry commission convened in Paris in 1992, the prescribed use of RU-486 includes as many as six or seven visits to the physician! That’s not at all the simple, do-it-yourself-at-home abortion drug that the press continues to suggest. These doctor visits include one to confirm the pregnancy and administer the drug; another requiring 12 hours in a hospital for prostaglandin injections; a possible third visit to expel the body of the preborn child; another visit (required in 20% of the cases) for repeat prostaglandin injections; another visit when a surgical D & C is required; and, when that’s necessary, yet another visit to insure that all parts of the dead baby are removed from the uterus! Can you see why Planned Parenthood and other abortion organizations are driving to expand the RU-486 abortion campaign? They stand to make a lot of money from not only sales of the drug but from all these subsequent services.
Oh yes, one more thing. There is the well-documented problem of excessive bleeding associated with RU-486 – which often requires a hospital stay as well.
A joint committee of the French Republic (including the Director of General Health, the Director of Hospitals, and the Director of Pharmacy and Medicine) admitted that prostaglandins present a significant danger to a patient’s cardiovascular action. For that reason (and in the face of other severe consequences of using RU-486), that group suggested that whenever prostaglandins are given a patient, cardiopulmonary resuscitation equipment be present too – along with a defibrillator, calcium channel blockers, and the monitoring of vital signs over a period of hours because of the danger these drugs present to the human heart. As you can see, this almost amounts to an Intensive Care Unit!
So, I must ask again; do you get this picture when you read news stories about RU-486? No – because a distinctly dangerous ideology now has the helm. And true science, not to mention, proper health care, has been hijacked in the quest for total sexual freedom.