By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials have disclosed that two mifepristone (RU-486)-induced deaths occurred in the past two years, bringing the total number of reported death related to RU-486 to 12.
The Family Research Council (FRC) is reporting that the CDC announcement came almost 10 years to the day after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the abortion drug, deeming it a major advancement for women’s health and safe for public use.
News of the latest deaths came in a letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine on September 30, 2010. Both mifepristone-induced septic shock deaths were caused by c. sordellii, the bacteria linked to a number of RU-486 deaths from 2000-2006.
One woman who died was 29; the other was 21. The deaths occurred in 2008 and 2009, respectively. The public is only now learning of these deaths.
Of this announcement, Jeanne Monahan, director of the FRC’s Center for Human Dignity, who formerly worked in the Office of the Secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, made the following comments:
“Abortion proponents claim that abortions should be ‘safe, legal and rare.’ Yet RU-486 use is increasing and its safety record is entirely dubious, as these two deaths prove.”
Monahan goes on to say that ten years ago, the FDA’s approval process for RU-486 was flawed, relying primarily on French data that the FDA admitted was marked by ‘carelessness,’ ‘fraud,’ and ‘evidence tampering.’ And while the abortion industry achieved a major victory with the approval of RU-486, women have been the victims of the abortion agenda ever since.
“Other drugs with less extreme adverse affects have been pulled from the market quickly, but not RU-486, whose over 1,300 adverse affects on women using the drug – including 336 hospitalizations, 172 blood transfusions, and most gravely, 12 deaths – have been ignored. These two women are just the latest of many to pay a severe price.”
The same tragic set of circumstances seems to have occurred again when the FDA recently approved ulipristal acetate – ‘ella’ – as an emergency contraceptive, despite the fact that it shares an almost identical chemical make-up and identical modes of action with RU-486.
“Given the strong resemblance, there is reason to believe that the negative side effects will also be similar,” Monahan said.
“Women should not be the ‘guinea pigs’ of the abortion industry or the government. These risks should not be taken.”
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