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Abortion Study Using Prostaglandin Misoprostol
You might have thought that the abortion lobby would have been satisfied once they got RU486, the French abortion pill, approved in the United States and available in over 30 nations around the world. But you’d be wrong. The world’s abortion promoters are looking for another chemical abortifacient. They prefer one that is “effective” in inducing abortion, but with fewer risks and side effects than RU486. But the driving aim is to find an abortifacient that is cheaper and can be used in poorer nations throughout the world on a much, much broader scale. And they are doing so, in spite of the fact that when their proposed substitute “fails” to abort the child, he or she faces a heightened risk of major anomalies. According to a study in the prestigious British publication, The Lancet, proponents believe that they may have found just such a drug—misoprostol—the artificial prostaglandin which has been used in conjunction with RU486 as part of a two-step chemical abortion process. RU486 essentially starves the baby, while misoprostol stimulates uterine contractions to force the child out. The abortion lobby’s problem is that RU486 pills are not cheap—about $90 each, or $270 for a standard three-pill dose –- making it difficult to sell in America and hard to export overseas. U.S. clinics have tried reducing the dose to one pill to cut costs (and increase profits), but this is still pricey for international abortion promoters. Consequently, several recent studies have involved trying to do abortions using misoprostol alone, which costs less than $2 a pill and much less if purchased from India or the Philippines. Misoprostol alone can induce abortion and has been sold on the black market and used in countries where abortion is illegal. Inter-national abortion promoters such as the UN have initiated studies to pin down the protocol, laying the groundwork for a massive campaign to export abortion to many of the world’s poorest countries. But there haven’t been any agreed-upon procedures or safety standards and potentially there are huge health risks if misoprostol is used in nations with primitive medical facilities. In countries where misoprostol has been used as an abortifacient, it hasn’t simply been mothers who were at risk. After widespread illegal use of misoprostol for abortion in Brazil, researchers found a significant number of women using the drug gave birth to children with full or partial facial paralysis, limb formations such as missing or fused fingers and toes, as well as hydrocephaly (“water on the brain”)or microcephaly (abnormally small heads). THE LATEST MISOPROSTOL STUDY Under the auspices of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Family Population Fund (UNFPA), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the World Bank, researchers in six countries (Cuba, Georgia, Armenia, Viet Nam, Mongolia, and India) tested four different misoprostol protocols on 2,066 pregnant women. They varied the administration and the interval of the dosage. Results of the study were published in the June 9, 2007, edition of The Lancet. Researchers tested whether misoprostol was more effective as an abortifacient when given sublingually (under the tongue) or vaginally, and whether the drug worked better if given every three hours or every 12 hours. Each combination of administration and interval was tried, with a quarter of women in each study group. The prevalence of side effects with each combination was also a concern to researchers. The measure of “success” was whether use of the drug resulted in a complete abortion, defined by researchers as the “passing of the products of conception without needing vacuum aspiration or dilatation and curettage during the follow up period.” If any tissue remained in the uterus, if the child remained, living or dead, the “treatment” was considered a failure and the woman was to undergo a “surgical termination of pregnancy.” Results for the sublingual and vaginal administration were about the same at the three-hour intervals, with “success” rates of 84% and 85% respectively. With the 12-hour intervals, “effectiveness” dropped to 78% for the sublingual, but only to 83% for the vaginal. Side effects, such as nausea, vomiting, lower abdominal pain, diarrhea, fever, chills, and headache were common, but tended to be more prevalent among the group taking misoprostol sublingually than those receiving it vaginally. Side effects tended to be lower among those receiving the drug at 12-hour rather than three-hour intervals, whichever the method. READING MORE CLOSELY In the very first paragraph of the article, researchers admit their aims. While claiming that early surgical abortion such as suction or “vacuum aspiration” is “one of the safest procedures when done by a trained provider,” the authors note that “developing countries do not usually have enough trained staff and cannot provide safe abortion services.” Their solution? “Provision of non-surgical abortion could improve the situation in such settings.” The study that follows is supposed to give readers the idea that this inexpensive drug can be used safely and effectively under the conditions of their recommended protocol. Yet serious questions remain. Women participating in the UN/WHO study were carefully screened to make sure they were ideal candidates for trial. Women who had a past or present serious illness, those with strong allergic tendencies, heavy smokers, those with mitral stenosis (a narrowing of the heart valve), high or low blood pressure, a history of liver disease or thomboembolism (blood vessels blocked by clots), sickle cell anemia, glaucoma, and hemolytic disorders (in which the body’s red blood cells are destroyed) were excluded from the study. So, too, were women with any uterine or cervical scar or “any gynaecological anomaly detected with ultrasound.” In developing countries where medically “trained staff” is limited, where modern medical equipment and facilities are virtually nonexistent, how is such screening supposed to be accomplished? The Lancet article indicates that ultrasound was used not only to eliminate candidates who displayed “any gynaecological anomaly,” but also to confirm that women had a “single intrauterine pregnancy with duration of 63 days or less.” In other words, to insure that the woman was not carrying twins, that her pregnancy was not tubal or ectopic, and that she was no more than nine weeks pregnant. How will such assurances be made when there is no ultrasound, much less anyone trained to read an ultrasound? The researchers speak as if the “success” rates are high. In fact even under their best scenario, the drug “failed” 15% of the time. If being used in places where there are few medically trained staff and insufficient facilities for safe surgery, what are such women to do? (If the baby is fortunate enough to survive, he or she may suffer from various congenital malformations because of the drug’s impact during crucial developmental stages.) Even among those for whom the drug is “successful,” there can be serious problems. The article notes that 154 women—about one out of every dozen participating in the study—came in for “unscheduled visits” owing to one or more complaints. Most were for bleeding, lower abdominal pain, or other gastrointestinal issues. Thirteen women had to be hospitalized and seven women had to have blood transfusions. Where will women turn for help when there is no doctor or hospital nearby? Evidence from the American Experience In the United States, several women have died of fatal infections from a rare bacteria after using the RU486/misoprostol combination. Some have pointed to misoprostol and its method of administration as the culprit, rather than RU486, even though there was some evidence that RU486 inhibited a woman’s immune system. The theory is that when a woman vaginally self-administers the misoprostol (as was the case for many in The Lancet study) under less than sterile conditions, it could possibly introduce a dangerous bacteria into her reproductive system. The bleeding accompanying every chemical abortion would simply give the infection further opportunity to spread. No conclusion was reached on the ultimate trigger for the infections that killed the U.S. women. But Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion chain and one of the RU486/misoprostol combination’s biggest promoters, decided it would no longer have its patients self-administer misoprostol vaginally after several of the deaths were revealed. The vaginal self-administration of misoprostol has never been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). That has not deterred the abortion lobby, which is anxious to have the protocol approved so that it could keep women from having to come back in to the doctor’s office for a second visit. The FDA said that there wasn’t sufficient evidence of the safety of that use. This latest study by the UN and WHO appears to be designed to try and address that evidentiary deficit and to bring a cheap chemical abortion method to the developing world. The evidence we have tells us that if they do, it won’t just be a lot more babies who die, but a lot more mothers too. |