This September marked the 10th anniversary of the approval of RU 486 by the Clinton administration. RU 486 is an artificial steroid that blocks progesterone, a hormone necessary to continue pregnancy. In the past decade, RU486 has led to the death of hundreds of thousands of babies. Countless women have also suffered or even died from side effects of this horrendous drug. These ten years must serve as a cautionary tale to stop not only the increase of RU 486 but also new and more powerful versions of the drug such as ellaOne.
A comprehensive report released in 2008 by Danco Laboratories, the RU 486 manufacturer, showed that RU 486 is used in 13% of all abortions in the United States. This was double the number of abortions using the drug in 2001. The report also revealed that in 2008 57% of abortion mills had RU 486 available for use compared to 33% in 2001. It is likely that these numbers have only increased in the two years since the study was released. Most startling was the fact that Danco confirmed that 840,000 women in the United States had been given RU 486 by 2008. This sobering statistic means that RU 486 is responsible for killing more than 800,000 babies in the past decade.
Besides the irreplaceable loss of innocent life, RU 486 is responsible for the harm or death of the mothers who take this pill. According to FDA reports as of December 2006 there have been 9 life-threatening incidents, 116 blood transfusions, 232 hospitalizations, and 8 fatalities associated with RU 486 in the U.S. The latest published data is four years old, and the Obama administration refuses to publish more recent statistics concerning women who have been medically harmed by RU 486. Those numbers also do not include the loss of life and illness that RU 486 has inflicted outside the U.S.
A new dangerous use for RU 486 is the “tele-abortion,” where a physician dispenses the pill from hundreds or thousands of miles away via a teleconference with the mother. When dealing with a drug that has such a devastating track record of side effects, it is terrifying to think that it could be dispensed to women without any first hand examination, monitoring, or follow-through.
There is no denying the harm that this drug has caused. The sad fact is that its use is not only increasing, but it is the precursor to a new generation of even more dangerous and deadly abortion drugs. The most dangerous legacy of RU 486 is the new ellaOne, billed as an emergency contraception pill that can be taken up to five days after conception. EllaOne received FDA approval this past August despite the fact it has not been fully-tested and virtually no long-term effects have been studied. It is possible that ellaOne could be sold over-the-counter within the next year.
Pro-Lifers must spread the information about dangerous abortion drugs such as RU 486 and ellaOne. Their purpose is to end a baby’s life, but in the end they could take both the life of the unborn baby and the mother.
