6.28.00
RU-486 Is No Boon for U.S. Women

6.27.00
Bush Does the Lulac

6.26.00
Loud and Proud

6.23.00
Dr. James Boice, R.I.P.

6.22.00
Hate (Crime) Cannot Wish Thee Worse

6.20.00
Murder in California

6.20.00
Collective Oblivion

6.19.00
Stand There and Enjoy It

6.19.00
Justice Should Be Color-Blind

6/28/00 10:45 a.m.
RU-486 Is No Boon for U.S. Women
Keep it off the market.

By Melissa Seckora, NR editorial associate

e need to make a "huge fuss" all right. But The Nation's Katha Pollitt has the "we" in this scenario quite wrong.

Referring to the French abortion pill RU-486, Pollitt argues that "the moral property of women" is at stake. The tone of her column speaks volumes about the attitude of abortion-rights activists: "Because it operates on very early pregnancies (forty nine days or fewer), [RU-486] escapes some of the opprobrium surrounding surgical abortion — there are no 'babies,' no 'precious feet,' no 'partial births,' whatever they are."

She urges all her pro-choice colleagues — laymen, as well as members of the scientific and medical communities — to contact the President, Congress, the FDA, and the "ever reticent" Vice President Al Gore and insist that they oppose the Coburn Amendment.

The Coburn Amendment, which is expected to face a House vote on Thursday, would bar the Food and Drug Administration from spending public funds to take further steps toward the approval of the abortion-inducing chemicals for the U.S. market. Pro-choicers realize how important this struggle is. They know that if Congress bars the FDA from approving RU-486, this will be a huge setback to the abortion-rights crusade, and to their "moral property" (whatever that is).

In February, the FDA issued an approval letter to the Population Council for the use of RU-486 in the United States. In response to the FDA, the National Right to Life Committee stated: "This is the first time in history that the FDA is considering approval for a drug explicitly used for the purpose of destroying rather than saving life…. If the FDA approves this deadly drug, women will suffer and their children will lose their lives because pro-abortion groups are playing politics….We hope the FDA takes the opportunity to review the documentation that proves that RU-486 is dangerous for women and deadly for their unborn children."

Dangerous and deadly: That's a fact. The RU-486 abortion drug not only causes the death of the unborn baby; it can cause extreme pain and side effects to the mother. There have been accounts of women bleeding to death, suffering from heart attacks, and requiring surgery; indeed, in some cases, a surgical abortion is necessary to complete the procedure. There is even reason to believe that use of RU-486 could affect not only a woman's current pregnancy, but her future pregnancies as well — potentially inducing miscarriages and causing severe malformations in later children.

RU-486 is a threat to health, and it's quite simply not the FDA's job to promote new methods of abortion at the cost of increasing women's health risks. Approval of this drug would be likely to increase the number of abortions in the U.S. beyond 1.5 million a year. The Coburn Amendment to the Agriculture Appropriations bill (H.R. 4461) would keep RU-486 off the market in this country: A vote for the Coburn Amendment, therefore, is a vote for women and unborn children.

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