• How knowledgeable are you about RU-486?
• How much information does your staff have to skillfully discuss RU-486 with a client?
• Are you looking for a great educational piece for a staff in-service or training?

Director of Education and Research for the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund Randall K. O’Bannon Ph.D and Director of Research and Public Policy for the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists Dr. Donna Harrison have written a duo of fantastic articles that you can read and download in their entirety at http://www.abortionresearch.us/images/Vol24No1.pdf for use in your centers as well as education for your staff.

• The Introduction and Use of the Abortifacient Mifepristone (RU-486) in the United States
• The Introduction and Use of the Abortifacient Mifepristone (RU-486) in the Developing World

Let me whet your appetite with a few excerpts from the 12 page well-referenced articles…

The Introduction and Use of the Abortifacient Mifepristone (RU-486) in the United States

By Randall K. O’Bannon Ph.D,  Director of Education and Research for the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund

“The discovery of the pregnancy hormones progesterone (1929) and estrogen (1934) opened up whole new possibilities. Gregory Pincus, one of the co-inventors of the oral contraceptive pill, theorized that “anti-progestins should be implantation inhibitors,”

“Etienne-Emile Baulieu visited Pincus in Puerto Rico, where trials were being conducted of the new birth control pill, and came away determined to devote his life to steroid research, believing Chemical contraception central to women’s health and to control of the world’s population (Lader, RU-486, 29-30, Baulieu, 69).

“He returned to France and began working as a consultant to French pharmaceutical giant Roussel Uclaf…”

“Normally in pregnancy, progesterone, produced by the corpus luteum, functions to build and maintain the endometrium, which welcomes and then sustains the developing child in his or her earliest days. As pregnancy progresses, the placenta takes over progesterone production, but those critical first weeks are crucial to the establishment of the child’s nurturing and protective environment.”

“Anti-progestins bind to the same receptor sites as progesterone, but then do not carry out the same tasks. With the progesterone signal effectively blocked, the endometrial lining decays and sloughs off, depriving the developing child of essential nutrients, essentially starving her or him to death as the protective environment around her or him collapses.”

“Ultimately, under what The New York Times termed “sustained political pressure from the Clinton administration, a deal was struck granting U.S. licensing rights to the Population Council of New York in May of 1994. Roussel agreed to turn over all rights and responsibilities connected to the drug to the Population Council for free, hoping to avoid becoming a boycott target.”

“A common medical issue in many of these deaths is how difficult it is, for both patients and doctors, to distinguish between the ordinary side effects of chemical abortion, which are often severe, and the signs of a serious problem like hemorrhage, ruptured ectopic pregnancy, or infection.”

“Women are told to expect heavy bleeding, akin to a heavy period, and understand that the abortion will be painful. When these occur, they assume that they are related to the abortion process. If the pain and bleeding become so substantial that they call the clinic or go to the emergency room, even the medical professional may consider the events to be abortion-related. Brenda Vise called the clinic repeatedly and was told that her considerable pelvic pain was normal. The doctor at the ER did a physical exam of Holly Patterson and sent her home with more pain medication. Both were dead before the week was out.”

“Many abortion clinics are ignoring the FDA protocol, changing doses of the drugs extending the cutoff date from 49 days to 63, eliminating the second visit and letting women take the misoprostol at home (San Francisco Chronicle, 12/5/11), or even going so far as to prescribe the drugs via webcams, eliminating all direct physical contact between doctor and patient entirely (KCCI, 5/1910; Sioux City Journal, 10/8/10). Failures and complications are not only common, but more problematic, as women are farther removed from the careful medical monitoring that is essential to this process.”

“The Guttmacher Institute estimated that in 2008, more than a quarter of all abortions done at 9 weeks gestation or earlier were chemical abortions and both the overall percentage of chemical abortions and the number of clinics offering these abortions have been steadily increasing. If things continue trending as they are, it means that we can expect more women will die, along with tens of thousands more of their unborn children.”

The Use of the Abortifacient Mifepristone (RU-486) in the Developing World

By Donna Harrison, M.D,, Director of Research and Public Policy, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists

“The use of non-surgical (medical) abortion in the developing world has had great appeal for abortion advocates. Surgical procedures in third world countries with poor medical infrastructure, lack of dependable transportation to emergency centers, and even inadequate water supplies pose health risks for patients electing to have a surgical abortion. On the other hand, simply taking a pill to undo the pregnancy appears to be a good solution for third world women. “

“The reality is that surgical abortions are still necessary in a number of cases because the pill fails; medical abortions are being attempted in settings with inadequate backup to care for complications; and hemorrhaging, a common side-effect of RU-486 abortions, is harder to control in third world environments. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to disregard such problems by enthusiastic abortion advocates, eager to expand abortion use in these countries.”

“In a moment of unguarded honesty, an ironic article, entitled Medical abortion: Is it a blessing or curse for the developing nations?, was published in the medical literature in 2011 ... [T]his article gives a rare glimpse into the reality of willy-nilly access to drugs which can end a pregnancy … The abstract opens with this statement:

"Medical abortion is definitely a safer and a better option, but in developing countries, its widespread misuse has led to partial or septic abortion thereby increasing maternal mortality and morbidity.”

“When the medical methods of abortion were launched in developing countries like India it was thought that frequency of illegal unsafe abortions by local dais and unregistered practitioners will decrease to a large extent and it will help in managing such unwanted pregnancies through safe and legalized abortions in peripheral health centres (PHCs), community health centres (CHCs), and civil hospitals. No doubt, though unsafe surgical abortions have decreased largely due to strict legislations but these have been replaced by increasing number of unsafe medical abortions.”

“Because medical abortion is being used increasingly in several countries, it is likely to result in an elevated incidence of overall morbidity related to termination of pregnancy.”

Download both articles in their entirety: http://www.abortionresearch.us/images/Vol24No1.pdf.