Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 19, 1994 TAG: 9405190133
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A14 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
In an agreement announced this week, France's Roussel Uclaf gave the Population Council its patent on RU-486, a drug that induces abortion. The international research agency says it can begin clinical studies in the United States this fall. This is a development long overdue, delayed by years because the French company feared political ugliness and an anti-abortionist boycott of its products in the United States.
Even now, while women in France, Great Britain and Sweden have the option of choosing a medical, rather than surgical, abortion, that choice will be years away for most American women. Clinical trial, selection of a manufacturer, review by the Food and Drug Administration - all this will take about 20 months, the FDA commissioner says. And the agency, he promises, will not rubber-stamp approval of the drug's use in this country.
Nor should it, providing that safe medicine and not safe politics is the agency's criterion for making the decision.
While the FDA commissioner is correct in saying use of RU-486 is not as simple as might be imagined - it involves, for instance, three visits to a physician - it has proven to be safe and effective in other countries.
Still, there are risks with taking any drug. Foes of legal abortions have expressed fears that, because the drug patents are being donated to a nonprofit agency, a woman who suffers ill effects will have no financial recourse for recovering damages. Such touching concern is easily relieved: It's nonsense.
The Population Council will conduct clinical trials, not manufacture or market the drug. That will be done by a pharmaceutical company. If a deep-pockets company suitable as a target for lawsuits is a major concern, there should be no shortage of fat, juicy candidates.
Even better, for those so concerned about the welfare of women seeking abortions, is that a medical rather than surgical procedure is less invasive, requires no anesthesia, carries no risk of uterine perforation or injury to the cervix, and tends to cause only moderate side effects. And it can be used in the earliest weeks of a pregnancy.
In any case, such issues are beside the point for abortion-rights opponents. What they really fear is that RU-486 will make abortions easier to obtain and more private. They are right.
Only those who believe there is no difference between abortions one day after conception and abortions long into pregnancy can, at this point, honestly oppose the introduction of RU-486. Only the most extreme opponents and extreme defenders of abortion rights believe there is no such difference.
Those in between, probably a majority of Americans, should side with the pro-choicers in supporting the medical advance and improved privacy promised by RU-486, while feeling some of the pro-lifers' discomfort with the prospect of a pill making abortion seem even more like birth control.
The pill won't eliminate surgical abortions - RU-486 is effective only in the very early stage of a pregnancy, and not all women will be able to take it. And it will be offered initially by only a limited number of specially trained physicians. That number can be expected to grow, however, as the pill is used successfully and doctors become more familiar with it.
Ideally, terminating an early pregnancy will become a matter between a woman, her conscience, and her family physician or gynecologist. But that should not lessen the need for prevention of unwanted pregnancies. Nor will the pill end the abortion wars, though it should reduce their savagery.
by CNB