The Food and Drug Administration wisely resisted the imposition of cumbersome restrictions when it approved the use of the abortion pill, RU-486, in the U.S.
This drug has been thoroughly and exhaustively investigated by the FDA for the last four years. It has been available for years in France, Great Britain, Sweden and China, and used by half a million women. It is safe; it is effective and offers a less dangerous and traumatic alternative to surgical abortions for women in the first eight weeks of pregnancy.
But anti-abortion legislators are now trying to achieve legislatively what they failed to get administratively. Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.) and Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) have introduced a bill that would require that doctors prescribing RU-486 be capable of handling surgical abortions, know how to read sonograms, be able to handle the complications that could arise from abortions, and have admitting privileges at hospitals no more than an hour away.
Such restrictions were considered and rejected by the FDA as unnecessary. While the congressmen insist they are concerned solely with protecting the health and safety of women, it seems the real intent is to restrict the availability of RU-486.
The drug is an alternative to surgical abortion, which is potentially more dangerous to women’s health and safety. Experience has shown the availability of RU-486 does not increase the incidence of abortion. It will, however, reduce the number of surgical abortions–and the number of women who are harassed on their way to an abortion clinic. The latter may have been incidental to the FDA’s approval, but it could be significant nonetheless. It could serve to change the tenor of the abortion debate.
GOP presidential nominee George W. Bush may have already started to do that, to his credit.
Bush has made clear his opposition to abortion. He has also acknowledged that the public majority is not with him and that his inclination is to win public opinion, not override it. He would seek to reduce the number of abortions through counseling and through encouraging adoption. Bush said in last week’s presidential debate he would not try to undo the FDA ruling. “I think once the decision’s made, it’s been made, unless it’s proven to be unsafe to women,” said Bush. Precisely.
RU-486 has come to America, with the promise not of more abortions, but of abortions that are safer for women. Let’s welcome that, and let America’s strong, passionate and necessary debate about the ethics and legality of abortion carry on.
