6/30/00 2:10 p.m.
RU Ready?
Why opposing the abortifacient doesn't help the pro-life cause.

By Dan Mindus, NRO

epresentative Tom Coburn (R-OK) will offer an amendment to the House agriculture appropriations bill today, intended to prohibit the FDA from approving new abortion drugs — specifically, RU-486. The abortion-inducing pill has been used in France for over a decade, and it is tempting to consider that fact as a knock-down argument against it. But better to resist temptation, and to resist Melissa Seckora's well-meaning support of the Coburn amendment, since the bill would effectively thwart the pro-life agenda.

Opposition to RU-486 generally focuses on two, contradictory contentions. The first, and more popular, is that the pill is dangerous: It causes bleeding and other immediate medical difficulties; it increases the risk of contracting diseases like breast cancer; it can cause infertility. The second, and more direct, is that the pill routinizes abortion; without the need for a doctor, RU-486 will cure women of their babies like it cures them of their headaches — sterile and safe. The tension between these two points is clear: How can the pill be both overly unsafe and overly safe?

All abortion procedures have some element of danger, and RU-486 is neither remarkably safe nor remarkably unsafe. Even if the pill were particularly injurious, opponents of RU-486 would still have some argumentative hurdles to leap: They would have to convince us that abortion shouldn't involve risk. If a women is going to sacrifice her child to her own convenience, why remove the difficulty of the choice — the fear of consequences like discomfort or infertility? Women are, for now, so constituted that the right thing to do is also the healthy thing to do. We should not hastily tamper with such a remarkable confluence of goods.

What makes RU-486 unique (and uniquely appealing to pro-choice forces) is that it can be taken without the oversight of a doctor; but that is something to be welcomed, not feared. Abortion advocates speak of "medical abortion" — and for good reason. The term connotes a moral neutrality typical of any other medical procedure. Going to an abortion doctor, the pro-choice camp believes, should be just as convenient and just as morally significant as going to an eye doctor. But "What do you recommend, doctor?" is not the question the average women contemplating abortion should ask. If pro-lifers are to be victorious, they must insist that a medical degree — like a degree in psychology — confers no expertise on moral issues.

The Hippocratic Oath, which fewer and fewer medical-school graduates take these days, reads, "Neither will I give a woman means to procure an abortion." One of the benefits of RU-486 is that it removes doctors from the equation, so they are no longer implicated. That should be a relief to individual doctors, and to the rest of us, for the profession as a whole would be able to live up more fully to the better-known part of the Oath: "I will use my power to help the sick to the best of my ability and judgment; I will abstain from harming or wronging any man by it."

As a political matter, the Coburn amendment is at best irrelevant (since RU-486 became available in France, the total number of abortions performed yearly has declined, and there is little reason to believe the American experience would be markedly different), and at worst terribly damaging to the pro-life movement. Most obviously, opposition to the approval of just one more method of first-trimester abortion is a waste of resources, which sets up a false standard of progress and provides only an illusion that something — anything — is being done.

Perhaps more importantly, the widespread availability of RU-486 might actually help to bring the American public around to the pro-life position. The easier it is to get an abortion in the early stages of a pregnancy, the more inexcusable it becomes to seek one near the end. And increasing the stigma on late-term abortions is the first step toward getting them banned, which is the first step toward the elimination of all abortion.

One final point about the politics of the Coburn amendment: Pro-choice groups maintain that the bill will prevent the development of drugs that are intended for other purposes, but have the side-effect of inducing abortion. When Representative Coburn offered his amendment last year, and the year before that, they had a legitimate point. But this year language has been added that prevents such problems. Now, only drugs "solely" intended for the purpose of inducing abortion will be stymied.

Representative Coburn is one of the House Republicans elected in 1994 but limited to only 6 years in office. This amendment — laudable and yet regrettable — will be one of his final, brave acts.