Posted on 08/29/2002 12:57:18 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Abortion was not safe before Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized the procedure, and the dirty little secret is, it may be even less safe today – even in the privacy of our own homes.
We have more laws safeguarding the animals we take to the vet than we have safeguarding the health of the 1.3 million women a year who have abortions. Radical feminist groups that have aggressively promoted this $90 billion-a-year industry have contributed to the current climate.
Furthermore, the abortion drug RU-486, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in September of 2000, may be one of the most dangerous – as well as traumatic – ways to terminate a pregnancy.
A citizens petition was delivered to the Food and Drug Administration last week by one of this nation's largest women's organizations and two physicians groups designed to force the agency to take another look at the abortion drug RU-486, Mifeprex, and it's prostaglandin chaser, Misoprostol.
The 92-page petition from Concerned Women for America, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Christian Medical Association charged that the FDA bowed to political pressure and violated the Administrative Procedure Act as well as its own "well-established standards" when approving this drug combo.
These groups charge that the trials "were not blinded, randomized or concurrently controlled." In other words, physicians or groups who were heavily biased may have conducted these trials or had a vested interest in proving that RU-486 was safe.
To be sure, the groups that delivered this petition have their own bias on abortion. They don't think the decision to take the life of a child in the womb ever is the proper decision, unless it is done to save the life of the mother. However, it's about time somebody stepped up to the plate and pointed out that these drugs are not only deadly to the child, they can be damaging, if not deadly, to the child's mother.
Where are all the groups that regularly go to the mat on women's health issues? They have assumed their usual heads buried in the sand, don't give-us-any-bad-news when it concerns abortion posture.
In April, Danco Laboratories, which manufacturers the drug for the Population Council, the New York group that holds the U.S. rights to Mifeprex, announced several adverse events among women who took the drugs between June of 1998 and November of 2001.
These events included ruptures of ectopic pregnancies, resulting in one death. Danco also reported two serious bacterial infections and one of those resulted in death. A 21-year-old woman suffered a heart attack after taking the deadly duo, although the manufacturer insists that there wasn't an established "causal" relationship between the drugs and these serious complications and deaths.
FDA data also reported another 22 women required hospitalization or another "intervention to prevent permanent impairment or damage" after taking Mifeprex during the same time period.
A report from the Family Research Council, "When There's Little 'Care' in Women's Health Care," chronicles how our government has failed to take the necessary steps to protect the women who go into the nation's abortion mills thinking they are perfectly safe.
Before Roe, feminists lamented that 5,000 to 10,000 women a year died because of illegal back-alley abortions – which was a lie. In 1972, the Centers for Disease Control reported that 39 women died as a result of illegal abortions. Today, how many deaths occur from "legal" abortions? The truth is we don't know and apparently the CDC isn't anxious to find out.
The CDC collects abortion statistics on a "voluntary" basis from state and local health departments. Not all states participate. Though abortion deaths increasingly are making it into our newspapers, few of these deaths have been included in these reports.
Medical data now is entered by computerized code. The FRC report states that those responsible for entering this data have found "that any attempt to code a death due to abortion under abortion yields a reject message from the computer programs provided by the National Center for Heath Statistics (a division of the CDC)."
The Supreme Court found a "right to privacy" lurking around in the secondary shadows of the Constitution and applied that "right" to abortion in Roe. Now it seems that the government is determined to keep the secrets of this largely unregulated industry in the shadows.
It's time to shine the light of truth on this subject and a good place to begin is with the FDA's approval process for RU-486.
If I had a dollar for everytime I heard a pro-"Choice" persons say so-and-so should have an abortion, I'd be filthy rich.
Even if you take fetuses/chilren completely out of the debate, abortion is a barbaric and inhumane practice. And one that can (and will) lead to coerced or mandated practices. Declaring abortion "safe" is just one more step in that direction. This is the ultimate agenda.
But what has the FDA done about it?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.