| Abortion Pill Examined by Eva Marie Stover, Women Exploited by Abortion |
| January 19, 1994, The News Enterprise of Elizabethtown, KY -- Pg. 4A Three feminists, Janice Raymond, professor of women's studies and medical ethics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Renate Klein, lecturer in women's studies at Deakin Univerisity (Australia); and Lynette J. Dumble, the senior research fellow in the University of Melbourne's department of surgery at the Royal Melbourne Hospital (Australia), have recently published a detailed 115-page book that sharply criticizes the abortion pill RU-486. "RU-486: Misconceptions, Myths and Morals" describes, an exhaustive detail, how women are being sold a bill of goods and are routinely being treated as "guinea pigs" to determine the drug's short-term and long-term adverse effects. The authors thoroughly documented the dangers of the chemical abortion technique (RU-486 plus prostaglandin to increase efficiency") and strongly demanded that RU-486 be pulled from the market immediately. There report, published by the institute of Women and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is especially important on two counts. First, it characterizes the first substantial criticism of RU-486 by abortion advocates. And second, it offers documentation that frames long-standing pro-life objectives to RU-486. The book totally refutes the safety and effectiveness claims made for the RU-486 abortion technique. The book attacks RU-486 in three general areas. First, contrary to what many pro-abortion feminists have insisted, the authors show that the RU-486 abortion method is neither private nor is it a step toward "demedicalizing" abortion. Second, RU-486 research reports reveal that scientists have cold-heartedly disregarded the well-being of women patients during testing in that they have consistently glossed over clear evidence of severe adverse complications. More alarming is the absence of information about the effect of RU-486 throughout the woman's body, on her immature ova, and therefore, subsequent babies. The authors also concluded that the RU-486's use for treating endometriosis and breast cancer, like earlier drugs is a fallacy. A recent article in Obstetrical and Gynecological survey "strongly cautioned against touting RU-486 as an anti-cancer agent. One study even suggested that RU-486 may cause existing cancer cells to proliferate. A third major criticism of RU-486 is its use in combination with the powerful synthetic hormone prostaglandin, to increase the "efficiency" of the abortion process. The authors worry about the unknown short-term and long-term biological consequences from two second-rate chemicals. They also believe it is irrational to expect that these two chemicals, which independently failed as abortifacients, will be miraculously transformed by their combination to become the successful and acceptable method of abortion in the future. These same reckless claims recall similar hopes about another "wonder drug" -- DES (diethylstilbestrol) -- which was prescribed to women in the 1940's, but years later, was found to cause horrible side effects such as uterine cancer and miscarriage for the daughters of women who took it during pregnancy. Recently, in New York City, 11 women whose mothers took DES during pregnancy won a $42.3 million lawsuit against three small drug companies. According to the Courier-Journal, Jan. 9th, these women claimed that DES caused them reproductive problems not even related to cancer. Why then are the pro-abortion feminists advocating RU-486 so adamantly? For the fear that Roe vs Wade would be overturned, leading them to seek another abortion technique at any cost, even at the cost of their own lives. Through ignorance, women are being driven further and further into bondage. Women of America wake up! In the guise of "freedom of choice" we are destroying ourselves and our children. So far, RU-486 has been kept out of this nation. But for how long? Let us continue to pray that the medical community will wake up to remember and reaffirm, by word and deed, the ancient words of the Hippocratic Oath they vowed to uphold until recently: "I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel: furthermore, I will not give to a woman an instrument to produce abortion." |