RU-486 Provides Private, Personal Abortion Method, Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Sexual Health / STDs;  Regulatory Affairs / Drug Approvals
Article Date: 12 Feb 2009 - 5:00 PDT

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Although the "best case" scenario is "that contraception is always successful and pregnancies are always welcome," that is "not always how things turn out," columnist Anna Quindlen writes in a Newsweek opinion piece. She continues that "between the clinic demonstrations, the political discussions and the imprecations from the pulpit, too many American women have come to feel that their pelvis is public property." She adds that it is "no accident" that women who have chosen a new abortion method in the form of the pill RU-486 "cite reclaiming privacy and control as the reason."

According to Quindlen, many abortion-rights advocates viewed the pill "as the answer to the rancorous, sometimes violent atmosphere that for so long had surrounded legal abortion." However, after FDA approved the pill in 2000, the "expected rush to what were called medical rather than surgical abortions didn't happen," she writes, adding, "The public interest in RU-486 ebbed -- except among women who didn't want to be pregnant anymore, where it steadily grew." She continues, "RU-486 flies in the face of anti-abortion orthodoxies, and not simply because some physicians who have never dreamed of performing a surgical abortion have no qualms about making the medication available. It counters the irresponsibility myth, which suggests that women who end pregnancies are thoughtless, feckless, and have not bothered with birth control or matrimony, despite the fact that many women who have abortions are married and were using contraception that failed."

According to Quindlen, the abortion pill accounts for 14% of abortions in the U.S. and "demands a high degree of responsibility. A woman has to ascertain early that she is pregnant and then take charge of the process herself, choosing to deal at home with the results." She writes that although in "every new political power shift" there is "talk of a search for common ground and the future of Roe v. Wade," a shift in "party or philosophy cannot change this undeniable fact: women who do not want to be pregnant will try to end their pregnancies. ... They always have and they always will." She notes that women have long used extralegal abortion methods, citing the use of the ulcer medication Cytotec, which has become the "abortifacient of choice among immigrant women," although doctors say it does not work as safely as the combination of Cytotec and RU-486, and in some cases women have been prosecuted for using it. Quindlen writes that "more and more women are choosing RU-486 because it enables them to take care of their own business in their own homes," concluding, "If we could travel back in time, before government was invited into the practice of gynecology, we might choose precisely this sort of private ritual ... a decision that may be pragmatic or painful or both but is, above all, personal. Never has the world 'choice' been so clear" (Quindlen, Newsweek, 2/7).

The opinion piece will appear in the Feb. 16 issue of Newsweek.

Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can view the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is a free service of the National Partnership for Women & Families, published by The Advisory Board Company.

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