RU-486 -- The Final Nail?

Unborn Babies Killed since Roe vs. Wade January 1973

As if our "trail of innocent blood" is not long or wide enough already with tens of millions of unborn murder victims since the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973, the Clinton/Gore administration's drug agency, the FDA, gave its sanction and blessing to the use of RU-486! This is the notorious "abortion pill" which has been imported from Europe and will now be available to women in the United States!

The primary question really is this -- will it be the final "nail in the coffin" of our culture, with Almighty God saying in so many words, "This shedding of innocent blood has got to be stopped!" When God does make His response to this, there is not a person, including the one who sits in the White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, who will have any doubts as to the fact that the Creator's patience has finally run out after His appeal to repent of this blood letting has been rejected for decades!

And you sure can't beat the timing of the "release" of RU-486 as VP "Woman's Right to Choose" Gore bid for and most certainly received a lot of female votes on November 7, 2000 -- Bill Clinton indeed has a strong competitor

Ah, a bit of an encouraging word -- President Bush has indicated that there may be a review of this RU-486 thing as to its "safety" -- as you might suspect, this has already stirred the emotions of those who sanction the destruction of the unborn! We'll wait and see what happens on this, but for now, the "kill pill" is still available!

Well, forget about that update on Bush -- he talks a lot of talk about being pro-life, but has not taken any aggressive action to reduce the carnage of the unborn -- didn't take him long to press Congress for legislation to deal with terrorists, did it? But nothing to deal with the "terrorists of a different kind" who operate "legally" in this country and destroy thousands of unborn children every week

Right to Life News Releases on RU-486

F.D.A. Approves Sale of Abortion Pill, Likely Made in China;
Abortion Industry Seeks Journalists' Aid in Marketing Strategy

Washington -- "The Clinton-Gore Administration, which claimed it wanted to make abortion rare, has embraced an abortion pill that will result in more abortions and new risks to women," commented Laura Echevarria, spokeswoman for the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), regarding today's announcement that the FDA has approved marketing of the RU-486 abortion pill in the United States. It appears from published reports that the drug will be imported from the People's Republic of China.

An ABCNEWS.com poll conducted Sept. 6-10 found that a plurality opposed making RU-486 legal (47% illegal, 45% legal). "The degree of opposition would no doubt be even higher were it not for the misinformation that has colored much of the past media coverage of the issue, including highly inaccurate references to RU-486 as a 'morning-after pill' or as a drug that causes expulsion of a 'fertilized egg,'" Echevarria said. "In reality, this method involves administration of two potent drugs, and frequently produces profuse bleeding, in order to kill a human embryo who is two to five weeks old."

"Only four months ago, after years of study, the FDA recognized the substantial risks of this two-drug abortion method, proposing restrictions such as requiring administration within one hour of an emergency room," commented Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D., NRLC's Director of Education, who has written extensively on issues surrounding RU-486. [See the RU-486 section of the NRLC website at www.nrlc.org.] "Now, four months later, the FDA has dropped most of these protections for women's health. What has changed, other than a four-month campaign of political pressure by the abortion industry and its allies? The FDA opted for the convenience of abortionists over the safety of women."

O'Bannon noted that a detailed story in the Sept. 5 Wall Street Journal strongly suggests that the abortion pills will be imported from the People's Republic of China, although Danco Laboratories has been unwilling to confirm or deny this. "The public has a right to know whether the abortion pill will be imported from the People's Republic of China -- a nation that is a leading source of tainted drugs, and which itself is tainted by the government's pervasive use of compulsory abortion," O'Bannon said.

The U.S. patent holder, the Population Council, and its for-profit creature Danco Laboratories will now step up a sophisticated marketing and public-relations campaign "aimed at swiftly building market share," according to a revealing report that appeared in the Sept. 5 Wall Street Journal. According to the article -- drawing on leaked internal Danco documents -- the company anticipates sales of $34.2 million by 2004. The people running the pro-RU-486 public relations campaign hope that journalists can be persuaded to adopt the campaign's loaded terminology, thereby reinforcing the marketing strategy. Here are some key points to keep in mind:

• "Drug-induced abortion" is an accurate and neutral term, while "medical abortion" is confusing and seriously misleading. It appears to be a key element of the abortion industry's marketing strategy to persuade journalists to stop calling RU-486 an "abortion pill," and to adopt the contrived marketing term "medical abortion." In reality, drug-induced abortions are no more or less "medical" than surgical abortions. The term "medical abortion" falsely suggests an abortion performed because of some medical need, when in fact RU-486 will be used almost exclusively for routine, birth-control abortions.

• It is grossly inaccurate to state, as some journalists have, that the RU-486/ misoprostol method is a "morning-after pill" or causes the expulsion of a "fertilized egg." The FDA apparently plans to approve the RU-486/misoprostol method up to 49 days "LMP" (i.e., after a woman's last menstrual period, which is 35 days after the life of a new human being has begun at fertilization). By the time a woman misses her period and has a positive pregnancy test, and thus might consider obtaining a drug-induced abortion, she is at least two weeks and in most cases three weeks or more past fertilization (thus, four or more weeks past her LMP). Thus, the baby is two weeks or more past the "fertilized egg" stage. By the time a woman's pregnancy test shows positive, she carries already implanted within her womb a human being, defined in technical medical terms as an "embryo." The drugs kill this human embryo by cutting off nourishment and then inducing uterine contractions.

• Every RU-486-induced abortion that occurs three weeks or more past fertilization -- which undoubtedly includes the great majority of such abortions -- stops a beating heart. Embryology textbooks say that the heartbeat begins at 18 to 22 days after fertilization, so if RU-486 is used to abort at the 49-day LMP cutoff (five weeks after fertilization), the baby's heart has been beating for about two weeks.

• The RU-486/misoprostol method poses serious health risks to women. Even under the carefully controlled conditions of clinical trials, the RU-486/misoprostol process puts one out of every 100 users in the hospital. Two percent of women using the method have such severe bleeding they need surgery. During U.S. trials, one woman in Iowa nearly bled to death.

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Former Abortionist Bernard Nathanson Warns of RU-486 Dangers
(10-10-00)

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Washington, DC -- A prominent former abortionist warns that RU-486, the abortion drug recently approved by the federal government, has potentially harmful side effects for women who use it.

In 1969, Dr. Bernard Nathanson was co-founder of National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, later renamed National Abortion Rights Action League. He was also the director of what was then the largest abortion facility in the world, New York City's Center for Reproductive and Sexual Health.

Presiding over 60,000 abortions during his career and helping to make abortion legal in the United States, Nathanson later renounced his profession and became a pro-life advocate, a conversion that made headlines.

During a recent interview, Nathanson revealed dangers that the FDA doesn't want to reveal to the American public about RU-486 and its companion drug, misoprostol, or cytotec. He commented that the approval of RU-486, or mifepristone, had less to do with public health and more to do with the politics of the Food and Drug Administration.

According to Nathanson, one potentially harmful side effect of RU-486 is the possibility that disorders could be passed down to surviving offspring of women who have taken the drug.

"RU-486 is the drug which acts on the female reproductive system, and anything that does that we have to be keenly aware of what are called transgenerational effects," said Nathanson.

One such drug acting on the female reproductive system was given to women during the 1940s and 1950s to stop excessive bleeding and to prevent miscarriages. Although the drug proved to be ineffective, it had an unintended side effect. Many female children of the women who had taken the drug suffered from a transgenerational effect and developed vaginal cancer, which led to numerous mutilating operations and death.

Another concern Nathanson has regarding RU-486 is that a woman who starts taking the pill may decide to carry the baby to term. The result, Nathanson said, can be serious skull deformities for the newborn.

Although RU-486's harmful side effects may apply only to the children of women who have taken the drug, its companion drug, cytotec, may have health-altering consequences for the women, too, the doctor warns.

"RU-486 in itself is not potentially dangerous to women, but [cytotec] is, and you have to give them together," Nathanson said. Nathanson explained that the drug has a potential to cause asthma, or exacerbations of asthma, and "things of that sort."

The drug also can cause excessive bleeding, Nathanson said, because at the early stages of a pregnancy, the drug cytotec, which expels the dead baby from the womb, often isn't completely successful on its own. The pregnancy tends to detach itself partially but not enough to be expelled, causing the bleeding.

"Many of these women bleed for hours at home, having terrible cramps, and end up in emergency rooms," Nathanson said.

Besides physical harm, Nathanson said, there are other potential problems that could spring up because of the dangerous abortion drug. One problem would be that already overcrowded emergency rooms would be even more overcrowded with young women who are experiencing excessive bleeding.

But even if the woman completes the abortion at home, she must still show the remains of her unborn child to the abortion practitioner.

"Many states have laws which require that the physician examine the fetal remains whatever is passed," Nathanson said. "Now the question is how is a young girl of 17 going to go plowing through a toilet bowl full of blood clots and other nasty things to try to find this tiny little fetus and bring it to the doctor?

Perhaps an even more complex problem, which could involve international drug enforcement agencies, could be that the drug will find its place in the dark world of organized crime. "There's no doubt a black market will spring up with these pills in respect to smuggling into Central and South America, or places where they don't approve of abortion," Nathanson said.

A woman wanting to have an abortion using the pill would now have to pay a hefty fee $600 for the three pills of RU-486 and two pills of cytotec. Nathanson calls this price-gouging but believes the price will eventually come down and be easily affordable.

Right now, Nathanson explained, a woman could walk into an abortion facility and pay just $150. However, even if an abortion practitioner sells a set of the pills at the exorbitant rate Nathanson said pharmacists would probably not sell the pill; abortion facilities will sell them directly he believes this poses a conflict of interest.

Once the price of the pills comes down, Nathanson said, the pills would in all probability show up in the clinics of the nations public schools.

"They'll pass this out [in school] too, and many kids, probably, will be using this for contraception and adults too," said Nathanson. "They'll be taking it every month at the end of the month just to be sure."

Although Nathanson made it clear during the interview he was speaking more as an ob-gyn and less as a pro-life advocate and bio-ethicist, he concluded his discussion over the pill by saying, "It really trivializes life, so there are ethical and moral issues."

More information on RU-486 to be added here as time marches on, and the fact that it is not as "safe" as some claim it to be!

One group that is working in opposition to RU-486 and its use is PETUH (People for the Ethical Treatment of Unborn Humans) -- visit them at their web site at PETUH -- they make available tee shirts for purchase which address the issue of RU-486 and use of the same!

For more on the abortion issue, go to:

Justice Denied!
United States Holocaust Gallery
Fighting for Your Life!
Portrayal of U.S.A.'s Hidden Horrors!
Human Life Is Sacred!
OK -- Why the Heavy Emphasis on the Abortion Issue?

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Comments or questions, email Clayton D. Harriger at cdharriger@hotmail.com