ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, September 26, 1996 TAG: 9609260045
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
FEDERAL approval of RU-486, the so-called abortion pill, not only will increase access to abortions for American women. It also could change, perhaps dramatically, the course of the abortion debate in America.
The Food and Drug Administration was right to grant conditional approval for the oral medication, which has been available to European women for almost a decade.
The procedure isn't the panacea claimed by some abortion-rights advocates. It involves a series of pills and doctors' visits over two or three days. It can have side effects such as nausea, abdominal pain and, in rare cases, excessive bleeding. It is appropriate only for women who have been pregnant less than eight weeks. And it does - let no one pretend otherwise - induce miscarriage.
The introductionof RU-486 will be no victory if it makes abortion, over time, more common. All sides, on the contrary, ought to be striving to reduce the tragically high number of abortions in this country.
Nevertheless, RU-486 offers a relatively safe, private method of abortion that does not require surgery. That's welcome not just because the right to abortion is protected by the U.S. Supreme Court, but also because this advance in technology could help direct the national struggle over abortion in a helpful way: from issues of access toward issues of choice.
While the legal right to abortions has been upheld, most recently by the high court in 1994, the availability of abortions itself has diminished. This has resulted from a number of causes, one of which has been the effect of anti-abortion protests on the medical profession. Fewer physicians perform or are trained in surgical abortion techniques. Fewer health-care facilities provide abortions.
RU-486 changes this dynamic. Doctors won't need specialized surgical training. The procedure won't have to be performed in abortion clinics or hospitals. This will restore more privacy to the decision, while diminishing protesters' ability to influence providers and patients.
That's no help, of course, to those driven by conscience to oppose what they regard as the wholesale murder of innocents. As last week's House vote on the late-term abortion ban reminds, the abortion debate won't go away, and it will still be argued, by some, at the extremes and in absolutes.
Even so, the introduction of RU-486 could eventually persuade anti-abortion activists to concentrate less on trying to outlaw access, and more on trying to reduce unwanted pregnancies while encouraging - rather than compelling - women to choose alternatives to abortion.
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