
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, May 31, 1994                   TAG: 9406020006
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By KEITH A. FOURNIER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BITTER PILL

RU-486 IS MORE than a dangerous drug designed to terminate pregnancy. It undermines the value of human life, while at the same time creating another opportunity for the verbal engineers to manipulate the language and soften the image of what can only be described as a drug of death.

While testing begins on RU-486 in this country later this year, regulatory agencies need to take a good, hard look at the dangers of legalizing this "killing pill."

In its simplest form, RU-486 is a human herbicide. RU-486 blocks development of progesterone, a natural steroid hormone that is essential for maintaining pregnancy. After a woman takes the pill, two days later she receives a dose of prostaglandin, a hormone that causes the woman to expel the unborn child. It must be used within the first 49 days of pregnancy.

It's not as simple as it sounds. The process can cause diarrhea, vomiting and internal bleeding. Doctors describe the process as "painful." In the event it doesn't work, a surgical abortion is required.

Consider the words of Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler: "Women should not think that pregnancy termination using a medical regimen will be simple. It will not be."

While RU-486 is being touted as an important health "alternative" for women, the reality is that RU-486 is just another way to make abortion more palatable. Presumably, taking a pill is easier and less invasive than surgery. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala calls it a "nonsurgical alternative to pregnancy termination." It sounds more appealing, less offensive.

It is clear: RU-486 provides another opportunity to use verbal engineering in the push to make abortion sound better than it really is.

C. S. Lewis called it "verbicide" - the murder of a word. He defines "verbicide" as "snatching a word and using it as a party banner."

The word being murdered, in this case, is "abortion." It once was universally understood as the termination of the life of an unborn child. But in less than a decade, it has become a "reproductive right."

In fact, once the cultural engineers redefined the word "abortion," they no longer wanted to use it.

Perhaps the most revealing example of this strategy comes from the French inventor of RU-486.

Etienne-Emile Balieu, M.D., PhD., is quoted in a 1990 interview with "Vanity Fair" as saying: `Because of the right-to-life people, abortion means a little baby that one pulls out ofthe mother. That's horrible. We must get rid of the word 'abortion' which I have tried to do with the word 'contragestion.'"

Whether it's called contragestion, or reproductive right, or a nonsurgical alternative, this verbal engineering is part of a clever campaign to persuade the American public that aborting a child with RU-486 is nothing more than "controlling fertility."

In 1990, Dr. Balieu told The New York Times: "The key to the future of RU-486 lies in the United States."

This insight is better reversed. The key to the future of the United States lies in its approach to RU-486.

As a nation, America already has cheapened life. Now, with medical testing scheduled to begin, and a new push for FDA approval, RU-486 will take center stage in the medical spotlight.

During this period, let's hope there will be efforts to expose and oppose the verbicide surrounding this human herbicide.

RU-486 is dangerous to the mother, deadly to the child and poison in the veins of a nation once dedicated to upholding unalienable rights - among them, the right to life.

RU-486 would, indeed, be a very bitter pill for this country to swallow.

Keith A. Fournier is executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, a public-interest law firm and educational organization.

by CNB