Posted on 03/17/2006 6:56:20 PM PST by Tirian
By ANDREW BRIDGES Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
Two more women have died after using the abortion pill RU-486, regulators said Friday in a warning that brought renewed calls for pulling the controversial drug from the market.
The organization that provided the pill to the two women said it would immediately stop disregarding the approved instructions for the pill's use.
The Food and Drug Administration warned doctors to watch for a rare but deadly infection previously implicated in four deaths of women who had taken the drug. The drug, also called Mifeprex or mifepristone, has not been proved to be the cause in any of those cases.
Nor has the FDA confirmed the cause of the latest two deaths. However, in one of them, the woman's symptoms appeared to resemble those in the cluster of four cases in California where the women died from an infection of the bloodstream, or sepsis. Those women did not follow FDA-approved instructions for the pill-triggered abortion, which requires swallowing three tablets of one drug, followed by two of another two days later.
Instead of swallowing the final two tablets, the second course of pills was inserted vaginally in the four women, an "off-label" use that studies have shown effective and that has been recommended by a majority of the nation's abortion clinics. That use does not have federal approval though studies have indicated it produces fewer side effects.
It was not immediately known if the second course of pills had been inserted vaginally in the two latest women to die, an FDA spokeswoman said. She declined to be identified, saying she was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue.
Two Senate abortion foes, Republicans Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, urged passage of legislation that would suspend sales of RU-486 until the Government Accountability Office reviews how the FDA approved the pill.
"RU-486 is a deadly drug that is killing pregnant women," DeMint said. "This drug should never have been approved, and it must be suspended immediately."
Monty Patterson, a California man whose 18-year-old daughter, Holly, died in 2003 after taking the abortion pill, also said the drug should be pulled from the market. The Senate bill is informally called "Holly's Law."
"The bottom line is that this is not about the abortion debate. This is about the safety, health and welfare of women," Patterson said.
Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc. said it would immediately stop recommending vaginal insertion of the final course of pills. Four of the women who died, including the latest two, received the pills at Planned Parenthood-affiliated clinics, said Dr. Vanessa Cullins, the organization's vice president for medical affairs. Planned Parenthood estimates RU-486 has been used 560,000 times in the U.S. since it was approved.
RU-486 is sold by Danco Laboratories and is approved to terminate pregnancy up to 49 days after the beginning of the latest menstrual cycle. It blocks a hormone required to sustain a pregnancy. When followed two days later by another medicine, misoprostol, to induce contractions, the pregnancy is terminated.
Danco said it was reviewing information about the cases as it becomes available.
The FDA previously has said the abortion pill remains safe enough to stay on the market. The rate of sepsis is about one in 100,000 uses, comparable to infection risks with surgical abortions and childbirth.
At least seven U.S. women have died after taking the pill, sold since The other U.S. death associated with Mifeprex was the 2001 case of a ruptured ectopic, or tubal, pregnancy. The drug is not to be used in those cases, in which the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus.
In the California cases, all four women tested positive for Clostridium sordellii, a common but rarely fatal bacterium.
Federal health officials plan a May 11 workshop in Atlanta to discuss emerging cases of disease involving the germ, which also have included infections in patients who have received skin grafts.
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No doubt about it. "The organization that provided the pill to the two women" does not accord with the standard practice of identifying Who, What, When, and Where as close to the head of the column as possible.
Probably AP designed the article so it could be continued on an inner page, so most readers would never see "Planned Parenthood" identified as the unnamed "organization" in question. Many newspapers trim such articles to fit, in which case the name of the organization would never be seen at all.
My thoughts exactly.
Excuse ME !!! But everytime RU-483 is used someone dies !!
I wonder if any attorney is going to pursue action against those who provided the murder weapons.
486 !!! sorry
Great catch. I must say, I've never seen this kind of technique of obfuscation before. How clever. How transparent.
Thank you a thousand times over for finding this article!
Bumping for Sunday morning pings to follow...to everyone that's been confusing RU-486 with that supposedly innocuous "Morning After Pill" that the libs in many states want our CHILDREN to have access to as an over-the-counter drug! Gawd!
Same critter, same high dose of unchecked hormones, slightly different fur. The "Culture of Death" is a Shape-Shifter; there's no doubt in my military mind.
Ru-486 has nothing to do with the "morning-after" pill which is just a high dose birth-contol pill to prevent pregnancy from occuring (i.e. prevent anything from attaching to the uterus).
This is nothing against you, but pro-life people do have to get their facts straight to not sound like out-of-touch fanatics on the issue.
An abortion inducing pill is very different than a pregnancy prevention pill. The debate over the morning-after pill has more to do with whether or not a few dozen cell embryo that exists before pregnancy occurs is 'life'.
If it is then make sure you are against regular birth-control pills too because they can work the same way (making the lining of the uterus 'uninhabitable').
Just desserts! They tried to kill their babies and wound up dead themselves.
Who said there is no justice?
Also, the morning-after pill does not terminate a pregnancy once it occurs. That is, if the there is an embryo attached to the uterus already it will remain so and the pregnancy will go on -- it only prevents the embryo from attaching, which medically speaking is when pregnancy starts.
(I'm not defending its use, just trying to get the facts straight.)
We don't know what their circumstances were...
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
Could it be Planned Parenthood inserted the pills with a coat hanger?
They may have been raped for all we know.
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