Pill first step to home abortion kits?

Press, 18 March 1989, Page 18

Pill first step to home abortion kits?

NZPA-KRD Los Angeles

Some call it the abortion of the future: a woman swallows a pill, and she is no longer pregnant.

No abortion clinic. No pro-life picket lines to cross. No surgery. It is simply a pill prescribed in a doctor’s office; a private abortion. Critics say it is the first step toward “home abortion kits” that would be as available as home-preg-nancy tests or over-the-counter cold remedies.

They say such a pill would make abortion easier; last year, 1.6 million abortions were reported in the United States alone.

Medical technology already has created such a abortion-inducing pill, a French-developed drug called ru-486, that is given early in the first trimester of a pregnancy. The pill blocks pregnancy after conception by interferring with the hormone progesterone, which is essential to the maintenance of pregnancy. When progesterone’s action is blocked, the uterus sheds its lining. Any egg that might have been fertilised and implanted in that lining is shed along with the uterine lining.

The French Government approved ru-486 for

general use in September, last year, but it did not go on the market for prescription use in France until March.

Ru-486 already is used in China, and it is being tested in at least eight other countries, according to the Washington-based Population Crisis Committee, a non-profit organisation established to encourage slowing world population growth.

But its use in the United States is years away because of Federal drugtesting requirements. Testing of ru-486 in America began four years ago at the University of Southern California Medical School in Los Angeles and at the University of California at San Diego. The tests are the first step towards licensing the drug in the United States.

Yet no American drug company has applied to the Federal Food and Drug Administration for approval, apparently fearing potential boycotts by anti-abortion groups, which has been the case in France.

The battle lines already are clearly drawn . by those who favour abortion on demand and those who believe abortion should be illegal. Each side agrees that ru-486 or other abortioninducing drugs could

change the nature of the abortion debate.

Supporters say ru-486 is an easier, safer abortion procedure. Critics say it’s just a new way to kill babies. “The bottom line is that there shouldn’t be a political intrusion on medicine,” said Dr David Grimes, one of the doctors studying the drug. Ru-486 may be safer, less expensive and much more private than a surgical abortion, he said.

But some fear an abortion pill could make the decision too easy.

“No-one but a dimwit would say abortion is intrinsically good, ano there are very few people around who will say it’s totally without costs,” said Mr Michael H. Shapiro, a law professor who studies biomedical ethics.

“If it is legally permissible and morally permissible, that doesn’t mean you want a decision to become casual,” he said.

But a lawyer, Mr John Jakubczyk, vice-president of the Arizona Right to Life Committee, said the drug, if it ever entered the market, would be used as another quick-fix approach to pregnancy. “It will create a product that’s a panacea, like home remedies to counteract colds,” Mr Jakubczyk said.