About
one out of four children aborted early in America are killed by
the abortion pill rather than a surgical procedure, according to an
Associated Press report.
The report concerns a Planned Parenthood study published in Thursday's
New England Journal of Medicine touting the improved safety of a drug
used in abortions that is now dissolved orally instead of vaginally -
the latter being a technique that is more prone to causing severe and
sometimes fatal infections.
The chemical abortion method consists of first distributing
mifepristone, also known as RU-486, which kills the child before
misoprostol is administered two days later, a drug that induces the
body to expel the corpse.
A spokeswoman with Danco Laboratories LLC, the manufacturer of Mifeprex
(mifepristone), told the AP that such "medical" abortions account for
about one quarter of all early abortions, and about one third of early
abortions at Planned Parenthood.
The AP reports that the use of RU-486 has risen steadily since its
approval in 2000, despite its availability only in clinics or doctors'
offices rather than pharmacies.
Planned Parenthood researchers published a study in Thursday's New
England Journal of Medicine analyzing chemical abortions at Planned
Parenthood between 2005 and mid-2008, and found that the change in the
misoprostol's administration reduced the risk of serious infection from
about 1 in 1,000 to 0.06 in 1,000.
The study did not address mifepristone's side effects, including
abdominal pain, uterine cramping, and vaginal bleeding or spotting,
which almost all patients experienced in clinical trials for an average
of 9-16 days. About 8% of the women experienced bleeding for 30
days
or more.
In 2007 the New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing
that chemical abortions did not pose more of a risk for miscarriage,
ectopic pregnancy, preterm births, or low birth weight than surgical
abortions.
While the media reported the news as proof that the abortion pill is
"safe," critics said the conclusion was misleading as the study failed
to compare the rate of post-abortive complications with the rate of
complications in women who had not aborted a previous child. That
would have shown that the abortion pill was merely equally as likely as
surgical abortions to dramatically increase the risk of such
complications, as shown by several studies.
Contact: Kathleen Gilbert
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
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Date: July 10, 2009
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