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The Story Behind Two
Additional RU486 Patient Deaths Part Two of Three By Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D., NRL-ETF Director of Education & Research Editor's note. The following is the first of a two-part series by Dr. O'Bannon that will run today and Wednesday. Part One will talk about the medical details of the cases. Part Two will examine what these latest deaths tell us. Part I: Medical reports show agonizing deaths
For some reason, it hasn't appeared in major newspapers or been covered on the network news, but two more women have died after taking RU486 and its accompanying prostaglandin misoprostol, to abort their unborn babies. Little is known of their personal stories, but a letter to the editor from three researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) appearing in the September 30, 2010, edition of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), lays out the basic medical details. According to the letter, a 29-year-old Hispanic mother of one died in 2008 within a week after beginning her chemical abortion with RU486. The letter says she was in her fifth week of gestation. Her symptoms are listed as severe abdominal cramping, vomiting, and diarrhea, all common side effects of chemically-induced abortions using these drugs. She was hospitalized on day five of the process with tachycardia (a faster than normal heartbeat), hemoconcentration (an increase in the concentration of red blood cells due to the loss of fluid or plasma from the bloodstream) and leukocytosis (an increased, abnormally high white blood cell count), yet without any fever, according to the letter. More technical medical jargon follows, but essentially, doctors found signs of a massive infection in uterine and surrounding tissue, and attempted to address this by removing her uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries. However she died when her circulatory system failed, her lungs became inflamed and it became difficult to breathe and a bacterial infection overwhelmed her system. Testing by the CDC confirmed the presence of Clostridium sordellii, the same infectious agent that killed five other chemical abortion patients. (Another bacteria from the same family, Clostridium perfringens, was connected to a sixth death.) Another woman died in 2009 under similar circumstances. She was a 21-year-old white woman, in her 7th week of gestation, who died 12 days after starting the chemical abortion regimen. Like her counterpart, she displayed severe abdominal cramping, vomiting, and diarrhea (day six, in her case), and was hospitalized the next day with tachycardia, leukocytosis, adding hypotension (unusually low blood pressure), pleural effusion (abnormal accumulation of fluid in the membranes between the lungs and chest cavity), and ascites (abnormal accumulation of fluid in the abdominal cavity). Again, this was all without any fever, the letter from the CDC researchers explained. Doctors in her case performed a dilation and evacuation to deal with an inflamed endometrium. After repeated paracenteses (surgical puncture with some instrument to draw off fluid), she died of a systemic bacterial infection with acute kidney failure and widespread clotting of the blood vessels. Clostridium sordellii was again identified by testing as the infectious agent. A few other notable elements were present in both women's cases, the letter revealed. In both cases, the recommended FDA protocol was ignored. The women received a decreased dosage of RU486 and an increased dosage of misoprostol. The misoprostol was administered vaginally, rather than orally, as instructed by the FDA. The altered doses and the vaginal administration of misoprostol are consistent with an alternative protocol put forward by the National Abortion Federation when the FDA approved the abortifacient in 2000. Without admitting any blame, Planned Parenthood abandoned the vaginal administration of misoprostol in March of 2006 once a couple of their own clients died. PPFA later added prophylactic antibiotics (that is, antibiotics given before the abortion as a preliminary precaution). The New England Journal of Medicine notes that Planned Parenthood reported the results of this change in an earlier issue of the journal-- July 9, 2009. NRL News reported on this in its September 2009 edition. Please send your comments on Today's News & Views and National Right to Life News Today to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha |
