From: rjk@world.std.com (robert j kolker)
Subject: Re: RU486, the Pill, & "pregnancy"
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Fri, 9 Oct 1992 16:32:37 GMT

bard@cutter.ssd.loral.com (J H Woodyatt) writes:

>kauff@neit.cgd.ucar.edu (Brian Kauffman) writes:
># Today on NPR & in a wire service newspaper article were stories
># (sorry, I don't have a transcript, corrections welcome)

>The following is copied without permission from _The_San_Francisco_
>_Chronicle_, 08 Oct 92, page A3 (the New York Times is credited in the
>byline): 

>	   In a discovery that could reshape the debate
>	over the French abortion pill, RU-486, researchers
>	have found that it can enable women to avoid
>	abortions by serving as a highly effective
>	morning-after pill.    
>	   In a new study, Dr. Anna Glasier and her
>	colleagues at the University of Edinburgh in
>	Scotland gave either RU-486 or high doses of birth
>	control pills to 800 women who requested emergency
>	help.
>	   Both treatments prevented pregnancy in women
>	who had had unprotected sexual intercourse in the
>	preceding 72 hours, but RU-486 caused far less
>	vomiting.
>	   Four of the the 398 women in the study who took
>	the birth control pills became pregnant while none
>	who took RU-486 became pregnant.
>	   The investigators said that if no treatment had
>	been given, they would have expect 17 pregnancies
>	in each group.  The study is being reported today
>	in The New England Journal of Medicine.
>	   Family planning experts hailed the study
>	because it not only documented the effectiveness
>	of high doeses of birth control pills in
>	preventing pregnancy, but it also showed that
>	RU-486 could be even better.
>	   Some said they hoped that the new use for
>	RU-486, which is not available in the United
>	States, would shift the debate over the drug away
>	from the contentious issue of abortion.
>	   For these reasons, ``It's an immensely
>	important study,'' said Dr. Michael Policar, vice
>	president for medical affairs at the Planned
>	Parenthood of America.
>	   But opponents of abortion said that
>	morning-after pills were, in fact, the moral
>	equivalent of abortions.  Saying otherwise ``is
>	more of the verbal gymnastics that pro-abortion
>	advocates use so routinely,'' said Dr. Richard
>	Glasgow, the education director of the National
>	Right to Life Committee.
>	   The use of birth control pills as a
>	morning-after drug has not been submitted to the
>	Food and Drug Administration for review, so the
>	pills cannot be advertised as having this effect.
>	   However, since they have been approved for
>	other purposes, doctors are free to prescribe them
>	as a morning-after pill.  Similarly, if RU-486
>	were to be approved as a morning-after pill,
>	doctors would be able to use it in abortions.
>	   Dr. David Grimes of the University of Southern
>	California School of Medicine said the new study
>	showed the advantage of using RU-486 to prevent
>	pregnancy.
>	   With birth-control pills, he said, ``a
>	substantial proportion of women will have bad
>	nausea and vomiting,'' adding, ``It's a punishing
>	regimen.  Why punish women who are alread in a
>	time of difficulty?''
>	   But because the study used RU-486, it is apt to
>	be swept into the rancorous debate over abortion.
>	   Many medical experts and women who favor the
>	availability of abortion want RU-486 to be
>	marketed in this country because it provides an
>	alternative to surgical abortions early in
>	pregnancy.  Many opponents of abortion just as
>	fervently want the drug kept out of the United
>	States.
>	   It is the first study to document a use for
>	RU-486, other than inducing abortion at up to
>	nineweeks of pregnancy, that could affect large
>	numbers of people.
>	   For that reason, Grimes said, ``I think this
>	study will irrevocably change the political
>	landscape of this drug in America.  Now we can
>	stop our obsessive focus on RU-486 as an
>	abortifacient.''
>	   But some abortion opponents disagree that the
>	morning-after method, which prevents a fertilized
>	egg from implanting itself in the uterus, is any
>	different from an abortion, which dislodges a
>	fertilized egg that is already implanted.

>-- 
.. The hard rock anti-aborts will not distinguish between an action taken
before a fact and an action taken after a fact. Preventing an  implant for
an "ensouled" zygote is not the same as disloging it.  Since the basic
motive of the anti-aborts is not the preservation of human persons, but
the punishment of women for having sexual intercourse without paying the
wages of sin (as it were) by risking pregnancy, they go bonkers over
RU-486 used as a "morning after pill".

Just keep in mind, extremists like the John Brown clone, Randall Terry
refer to contraception as the pre-aborting of children.

What further ails the hard-rock anti aborts is that Ru-486 treatment is
a private matter, thus they are unable to harass the physicians who
privide, or the women who get it...

Conan the Libertarian rjk@world.std.com
"Beautify America, Don't brake for a member of Operation Rescue"
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,alt.rush-limbaugh,alt.activism.d,alt.politics.elections,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton,talk.politics.misc