RU486 - THE LATEST IN CHEMICAL WARFARE
by Grant Clarke, Pro-Life News March 1990 Pg.3
In our age of fast food, fast cars and life. in the fast lane, we now have, the fast abortion, in the form of a pill called RU486. This is how many pro-abortion and feminists groups see RU486 and are pressuring health authorities in England, America and Australia to condone it. In reality they have opened a Pandora’s box.
RU486 is an anti-progesterone steroid that destroys the uterine lining, effectively starving the foetus. A few days later prosto-glandin is taken to induce contractions and the remains are flushed away. RU486 only has a success rate of 80% to 83% (taken with the prosto glandin this jumps to 95%). Tests have shown that a woman can also experience side effects from the drug; nausea, vomiting, and heavy bleeding that may last up to 30 days. Coupled with this is the reality that there is no long term research of the drug on the woman or any children that are born later.
So why are pro-abortion and feminists wanting immediate approval for RU486 and to by-pass the normal health checks? Many people see the pill as a chance to put abortion once and for all behind closed doors and thus removing the social stigma. So Wainer, from the Fertility Control Clinic, recently stated that RU486 should be freely available to all women. Ms. Wainer’s lack of concern for human life is incredible. She would allow a woman to use an untested drug with no knowledge of its effects. These are the women she claims to be liberating.
The idea that the drug maybe a quick solution to an inconvenience, which the media have ignorantly portrayed, may also be false. Newsweek (9/12/89) have estimated that the woman will have to make not one but three trips to the clinic. One trip for assessment, one for administering the drug and one for checking that the foetus is completely gone. Some pro-life proponents have said that this do-it-at-home abortion will backfire because, for the first time, a woman will be able to see that what she aborted is not a blob but a little human with arms, legs, feet and fingers.
In the US the National Organization of Women (NOW) are pressuring the pharmaceutical industry to begin manufacture of the RU486, but no drug company will touch an untried drug that could tie them up in law suits for years. Also, doctors who administer RU486 to a woman who is later found not to be pregnant and she suffers side-effects could find themselves up on a civil suit.
British medical magazine Lancet reported in 1987 that the molecular structure of RU486 resembled that of a 1950’s anti-miscarriage drug called DES. DES was discontinued when it was found to tend to cause cervical cancer in daughters of women who took it.
International Right to Life, at its Spring Conference, expressed concern that RU486 may be unleashed on third world countries that have neither the legal structure to protect women nor the medical services to handle the side-effects.
While Roussell Australia (the South Pacific branch of the manufacturers of RU486) have said they have no plans to market the drug in Australia, we should not be complacent. Roussell in France was forced to resume production of the drug by the French government! The Australian Right to Life Federation is launching a campaign against the drug coming to Australia. The first stage involves thousands of post-cards arriving on Roussell Australia’s door-step declaring our opposition to RU486. Post-cards are being specially printed and will be available soon from pro-life organizations in each state.