RU 486: A hard pill to swallow for anti-choice fanatics in U.S

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Pro-choice wins victory against Operation Rescue The struggle to uphold women's right to safe and legal abortion scored a major victory last month when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a New York injunction against Operation Rescue's attempts to blockade abortion clinics.

The New York injunction invoked a law originally used against the Ku Klux Klan.

NOW President Molly Yard said of the decision, "Randali Terry's [spokesman for Operation Rescue] deceitful description of Operation Rescue's actions as protected free speech and civil disobedience has been exposed as a public relations sham. The right to free speech does not include ... assaulting and harassing women."

RU 486 (the French "abortion pill") has been called everything from a "practical way to de-escalate this divisive war" around abortion rights to "chemical warfare against the unborn."

Medical studies indicate that RU 486 provides a safe, effective method to terminate early pregnancies. But how soon-and under what conditions-will RU 486 be available to American women? And what impact will it have on the fight for women to control their reproductive lives?

RU 486 is an oral steroid hormone that blocks the effects of progesterone, thereby causing the uterine lining to break down and expel a fertilized egg.

In France, the drug is administered over a series of four visits to a physician. On the first visit, the woman's pregnancy is confirmed and she is counseled on her options. If she chooses RU 486, she must also agree to a surgical abortion if the drug fails. By law she must wait one week to "reflect" upon her decision.

On the second visit, the woman takes three RU 486 pills. Two days later, she returns for a shot of prostaglandin, a synthetic hormone which, when used in conjunction with RU 486, greatly increases the effectiveness of the drug. On the final visit a week later, the woman is examined and, if the procedure has failed, undergoes a surgical abortion.

A study published last March in the New England Journal of Medicine confirms the safety and effectiveness of the drug. In over 2000 women tested, RU 486 was 95 percent effective, with relatively few side effects. The most common side effects were heavy and prolonged bleeding (with one woman in 2000 needing a blood transfusion), abdominal pain, cramping, and nausea. These sideeffects are comparable to, or less than, those associated with childbirth.

RU 486 has also tested effective in treating breast cancer, endometriosis, glaucoma, prostate cancer, and Cushing's Syndrome. This significantly broadens the medical application of RU 486 and adds authority to the fight to allow testing of the drug in the United States.

Administration firmly opposed A recent Harris poll indicated that 59 percent of all adults think RU 486 should be available to American women. But the federal government remains adamant in its opposition to allowing RU 486 into the country for testing purposes. "Our approach is not to encourage anything that would terminate a pregnancy," explained Dan Heinbok, spokesperson for the Bush administration, as quoted in The San Francisco Bay Times.

Proponents of RU 486 are seeking alternative routes. The most likely appears to be via California, which allows drugs not au10 8050 thorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to be tested for manufacture and distribution within state borders.

In April, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution which "calls on the Governor and the State Legislature to allocate sufficient funds to ensure that a scientifically valid testing program with regard to RU 486 will proceed in a timely and expedient manner."

All three candidates for California governor are posturing as the candidate who most supports testing of RU 486. AttorneyGeneral John Van DeKamp has been the most visible; he wrote to the drug's manufacturer, Roussel Uclaf, asking them to reEGAL 8A Kathleen O'Nan/Socialist Action lease the drug for to FDA approval.

But Ariel Mouttet, international product manager for RU 486, said the company is not willing to supply the compound. She stated that prostaglandin, which must be used with RU 486 to render it effective, is not marketed in the United States in the proper dosage. Moreover, the company contends that the United States is not ready for RU 486 because it hasn't "resolved its attitude concerning abortion."

Several small pharmaceutical companies have approached Hoechst A.G., Roussel Uclaf's parent corporation, for licensing rights to RU 486, but so far the company has not granted them. The National Organization for Women (NOW) has vowed Rescue. But because RU 486 is used at such an early stage of fetal development—when the fetus is the size of a blood spot-those posters lose their impact.

Questions remain

Many questions remain about how revolutionary RU 486 will be in our present society. For example, the estimated cost of RU 486—and the attendant multiple visits to the doctor—is $250, comparable to that of surgical abortions.

In France, which has nationalized healthcare, 80 percent of the cost is subsidized by the government. But the United States has no nationallly-subsidized health care, and most low-income women have no health insurance or private physicians. RU 486 may be too expensive for them, especially if public funding for it is denied, as is likely in the present climate of cuts in state familyplanning budgets and funding for abortion.

There is also speculation that under strict government control of RU 486, it would be distributed at a limited number of sites. These sites would likely continue to be targets for harassment and violence by Operation Rescue and other anti-choice groups.

Moreover, because low-income women need more time than wealthier women to gather financial resources for any abortion, chemical or surgical, RU 486—which must be used before the seventh week of pregnancy—may not be an option for them at all.

The drug has not been tested for its effects on sickle-cell anemia, lupus, and other diseases that predominately affect women of oppressed national minorities. Organizations like the Black Women's Health Project and the Native American Women's Health Resources Center have withheld their support for the drug, pending more information on how it will affect Black, Latina, and Native American women.

Almost everyone agrees that RU 486 will find its way into the United States. The question is whether it will be via safe, legal testing or via the black market—where misinformation about the drug could lead to abuse and misuse that could result in health complications and death.

At its last national conference in July 1989, NOW passed a resolution forming an "RU 486 Action Campaign." The resolution based the fight for RU 486 on the "feminist goal of women to control our own fertility." This is a basis on which the majority of working women can, should, and must be mobilized if the campaign to make RU 486 accessible to women worldwide is to succeed.

There is a good chance that the Canadian House will pass a new restrictive abortion law, despite polls showing 68%

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Canadian women brace for new anti-abortion law