National Abortion Federation Launches RU486 Ad Campaign

By Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D., NRL Director of Education & Research

Pick up a copy of your favorite women's magazine sometime this summer and you may be surprised at what you find. Starting in July, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) will be running advertisements for RU486 in some of America's most popular periodicals.

Ads Long on Style, Short on Substance

According to a May 24 Reuters wire report, "the ads feature a contemplative young women looking out a window" with accompanying text that reads, "You have the freedom to choose. And now you have another safe abortion choice."

The ads never identify the pill by its brand name - - Mifeprex - - referring instead to the generic name, mifepristone, or the "early option pill," which was a slogan of the kickoff campaign that followed U.S. approval. Women are given a 1-800 number to call and a web site to contact for more information, but not much about how many steps the procedure takes, how much the pills cost, or what the pill does to the child.

Blithely asserting that the abortion pill is safe, the ads conspicuously fail to mention the considerable risks and side effects often associated with RU486, or the fact that at least one woman nearly died in U.S. trials of the drug. Lists of side effects, precautions, and complication rates typically accompany most pharmaceutical ads as a legal requirement, but NAF claims its ads are educational, not marketing a specific product, so it doesn't have to include any of the usual health warnings.

The $2 million ad campaign is being underwritten by contributions from private groups such as the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, said NAF executive director Vicki Saporta.

The NAF ad is scheduled to run in People and Self magazines in July and in 11 other magazines, including Glamour, Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan, and Vanity Fair, before summer's end. NAF said it hopes through the ad campaign to reach 70% of women between the ages of 18 and 49. Of the publications NAF contacted to run their ad, only one, Redbook, chose not take the advertisement.

NAF's Saporta said, "Our phone has been ringing off the hook from women who want to know more about this safe early abortion option" (Reuters, 5/24/01). If so, this raises the obvious question as to why NAF saw the need for such an expensive ad campaign.

As reported in the previous issue of NRL News, the real problem the pill's promoters are facing is that the drug isn't selling. Women may call, but once they find out the commitment (three office visits over a two week period), the cost ($75 to $100 more than a surgical abortion), and the conditions (used up to only 49 days of pregnancy) involved, they often opt for the quicker, cheaper surgical method or decide not to have an abortion at all. A complex and cumbersome regimen discourages abortionists from taking part.

RU486 "involves too many appointments and too much counseling," one San Diego gynecologist told a reporter from the Los Angeles Times (5/31/01). "It isn't worth it."

George Kung, a San Diego abortionist who is president of the local gynecological society considers the abortion pill a major political development, but doesn't himself offer it. "If a patient doesn't keep her [post-abortion] appointment... if she cramps in the middle of the night, I don't want to deal with that," Kung told the Los Angeles Times. "I don't want to be responsible around the clock, seven days a week."

Planned Parenthood clinics in Los Angeles told the Los Angeles Times that the percentage of women choosing the RU486 method in January in February of this year was "way less than 1%." Planned Parenthood clinics in San Diego and Riverside counties said no more than 3% of women at their clinics were opting for the pill. Even more telling, a nurse practitioner for the San Diego and Riverside clinics said that half of those expressing interest in the chemical method do not go through with it.

As of June 2001, not a single doctor or clinic was offering the pill in Washington, D.C., NAF's hometown (Washington Post, 6/10/01).

As mentioned in the May NRL News, some clinics are raising eyebrows by cutting corners trying to attract business and earn a profit on the expensive pill. Family Planning, one of the largest dispensers of RU486 in California, is reducing the dosage (from three pills to one) and extending the FDA-sanctioned outer limit of 49 days up to nine weeks, according to the Los Angeles Times. In a revealing comment, Diane Maracich, Family Planning's coordinator for the RU486 project, told the Times, "You can catch a lot of women in those two weeks."

Danco, the U.S. distributor of RU486, sells the FDA-approved three-pill dose for $270 (this does not include the cost of other medications, office visits, ultrasounds, etc.). The same dose sells for just $40 in France, where the pill was first developed. But Danco told the Times that the price it charges in the U.S. helps make RU486 "a viable option in the marketplace" and allows the company to recoup the cost of bringing the pill to market.

Danco raised about $34.7 million for the RU486 project, and was expecting to generate about $3.7 million in sales by the end of 2000 with plans to bring in $34.2 million by 2004 (Wall Street Journal, 9/15/00). No sales figures have been released, but what is being reported about demand seems inconsistent with Danco's original financial forecast.

The problem, however, is the product, not the marketing. Dr. Terry Winegar, president of the San Diego Academy of Family Physicians, told the San Diego Union-Tribune (5/6/01), "There are a lot more problems with using that (drug) than the public's been led to believe."

The obvious question is whether the National Abortion Federation's ad campaign corrects those misconceptions or merely perpetuates the misinformation.