After 10 Years, RU 486 Abortion Drug Hasn't Helped Women as Promised

From http://lifenews.com/nat6737.html

After
10 Years, RU 486 Abortion Drug Hasn't Helped Women as Promised

by
Steven Ertelt

LifeNews.com Editor

September 29,
2010








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Washington,
DC (LifeNews.com) -- Two women have written editorials about the
tenth anniversary of the RU 486 abortion drug, which has been responsible
for the deaths of dozens of women and injuring thousands more across
the globe. They say the abortion pill was supposed to help women but
can't find any evidence of that.
Jeanne
Monahan of the Family Research Council, and formerly an employee at
the Health and Human Services Department writes in a
column at Human Events that the drug has been entirely unsafe
for women during the
10 years.
"Chemical
abortions, while indeed legal, have over the last ten years posed
major safety concerns including infection, life-threatening bleeding
and even maternal death," Monahan writes. "Despite this
dubious safety record, it appears to be a major goal of the abortion
industry to increase the number of chemically induced abortions."
Monahan
says the Food and Drug Administration approval process made it clear
the Clinton administration, which approved the drug, had no interest
in helping women.
"Looking
back at the spring and summer of 2000, the FDA approval process of
RU-486 was flawed, rushed, politicized and deviated from the FDA norm
in a variety of ways, including the use of inferior clinical trials
to support its safety," she noted. "For example, when the
FDA’s advisory panel voted to approve RU-486 in 1996, American
trial data was neither finished nor sufficient, so the FDA relied
on French data primarily, which is atypical."
The
pro-life writer says the FDA said the same data had been found by
the FDA to be marked by “carelessness,” “fraud”
and “evidence tampering.”
Monahan
points to the death of Holly Patterson, an 18-year-old from California,
who died after getting the abortion drug and bad instructions to take
it vaginally from Planned Parenthood. That, she says, proves allowing
sales of the abortion drug in the name of women was a fraud.
"As
RU-486 celebrates its ten-year anniversary, one thing is ironic. The
abortion movement promised decades ago that women having abortions
would have the best medical attention—no more unsupervised, lonely
abortions with women bleeding away in back alleys," she writes.
"Well,
now with chemical, and especially with telemed abortions, women have
less medical attention and still bleed away, having a lonely, unsupervised
abortion over a toilet. Progress for women’s health? No,"
Monahan concludes. "Instead, pursuing an agenda of increasing
chemical abortions at all costs, the abortion industry is reverting
women’s health back to the Dark Ages."
Meanwhile,
Anna Franzonello of Americans United for Life also
condemned the abortion drug in terms of its adverse impact on
women.
"A
look at the facts surrounding the FDA approval of the drug and its
10 years of use in the U.S. is sobering. Women’s health has been
sacrificed and countless lives have been taken to advance the agenda
of the abortion industry," she writes.
"RU-486
was not adequately tested for its safety and effectiveness and it
does not provide any meaningful therapeutic benefit over surgical
abortions already available. In one study, RU-486 failed in 18.3 percent
of patients, while surgical abortions failed in only 4.7 percent of
patients," Franzonello notes. "Taken alone, RU-486 fails
in one-third of cases, so the regimen includes a second drug –
a prostaglandin – that must also be taken."
Franzonello
accuses the FDA, under the Obama administration, of continuing to
ignore women's health with its approval of the ella
drug, which causes abortions but is billed as a morning after
pill.
"In
August 2010, the FDA approved the drug ella. Like RU-486, ella is
a selective progesterone receptor modulator (SPRM). By blocking progesterone,
an SPRM can either prevent a developing human embryo from implanting
in the uterus, or it can kill an implanted embryo by starving it to
death," she says.
"In
addition, there are serious concerns about the lack of studies regarding
the drug ella. The FDA’s prescribing instructions for ella note
among the things that have not been studied are: the safety and efficacy
of repeated use of ella, how ella may interact with hormonal contraceptives,
the effects of ella on minors, the risks to a fetus when ella is administered
to a pregnant woman, and risks to an infant when ella is taken by
a nursing mother," he explained.
Franzonello
says ella, like RU 486, subjugates women's health to a second class
status.
"September  28, 2010 is a somber anniversary. Ten years ago today the FDA put
politics above women’s health. Unfortunately, it was not an isolated
incident. The approval of ella demonstrates that when it comes to
chemical abortion, advancing the abortion industry’s agenda is
more important to the FDA than protecting women’s health,"
she concludes.