Pro-Life Efforts on RU486 Not a Failure

By Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D.
NRL-ETF Director of Education and Research

With the nation's most pro-abortion administration in history in power for seven and a half years and Roe v. Wade still the law of the land, it was remarkable that approval of RU486 took as long as it did.

That approval did take seven and a half years (11 years, if you include the work of the pro-life Bush Administration, which thwarted pro-abortion efforts) is a testimony to the hard work and vigilance of pro-lifers who participated in the consumer product boycott, distributed the fact sheets, wrote the letters to the editor, and kept themselves informed and up to date. Thus equipped they challenged the myths and misinformation put out by the pill's supporters.

Early on, some women's magazines touted RU486 as some nearly magic "anti-pregnancy" pill. Typical were the comments of Sue M. Halpern in Ms. magazine (April 1987): "Imagine being pregnant, swallowing a pill, and - - presto! - - not being pregnant any longer."

However, thanks to the truth campaign waged by National Right to Life and its grassroots supporters over the past decade, this fairy tale is much less common these days. Even in its September 29, 2000, editorial celebrating the approval of RU486, the Washington Post declared, "taking it isn't the trivial, pop-a-pill medical procedure its enthusiasts have sometimes imagined. ... The full procedure requires a few trips to a doctor; side effects include cramping and bleeding; one in a hundred women will have bleeding severe enough to require surgery." (Even while this may still understate the danger, it is a far cry from days of the magic "anti-pregnancy" pills.)

The Post added, "All of this may lessen the attractiveness of mifepristone as compared with surgical abortions and so diminish the impact of yesterday's decision." Studies tell us that it is not merely women who have developed mistaken ideas about RU486's ease and safety, but doctors as well. Many of them also succumbed to the hype, prompting them to tell pollsters that they would probably offer the drug once it was approved. Abortions could skyrocket if a significant number of these doctors add abortion to their practices.

But news of the risks and dangers, relentlessly publicized by pro-lifers, has caused some doctors to reevaluate and others, who are planning to offer it, to discourage its use. In another Post article, the owner of an abortion clinic in Manassas, Virginia, said her office will offer RU486. However, because it will probably be more expensive, more painful, and require multiple visits to the doctor's office, the Post said, "she will hesitate to recommend the pill."

The long delay has also given pro-lifers the opportunity to correct a lot of false information about fetology, the development of the unborn child. In the beginning, many reporters were simply repeating the abortion industry's line that RU486 prevented a "fertilized egg" from attaching to the uterine wall.

This ignored the biological fact that by the time RU486 is used, the child is probably somewhere between three to five weeks old, already implanted in the uterine wall, medically referred to as an embryo, with a beating heart.

So prevalent was this misinformation that abortionists offering chemical methods were actually complaining that the women coming to them for such abortions were having to be told they were abortions.

While language is still a serious problem (see above), talk of the "fertilized egg" was largely missing from newspaper accounts of the abortion drug's approval, typically replaced by the more scientific term "embryo." The change is small, but it could go a long way towards dispelling women's misconceptions about this potent abortifacient.