Abortion Industry Puts Profits Over Women Pushing RU 486 Drug

Opinion   |   Mailee Smith   |   Sep 27, 2011   |   12:17PM   |   Washington, DC

Earlier this week, a pro-life group out of London highlighted a study confirming that abortion drugs are more painful and less preferred by women than standard surgical abortions.  That study, originally pubished in late 2010, is particularly important now as the issues of health care, the defunding of abortion providers, and the limiting of “telemed abortions” are debated across the United States.

Specifically, researchers found the following:

  • Women preferred surgical abortion to medical abortion (i.e., abortion caused by drugs)
  • Women who had medical abortions experienced more pain on the day of the procedure (43 percent, compared to 23 percent)
  • Women who had medical abortions experienced more bleeding (37 percent, compared to just 4 percent)
  • Almost half of the women in the medical abortion group indicated that they would not choose medical abortion again, but none of women in the surgical group who were available for follow-up indicated that they would opt for a different procedure
  • Almost half of the women in the medical abortion group stated that the procedure was worse than they expected, while none of the women in the surgical group indicated that that the surgical procedure was worse than expected.

While the study focused on women in their second trimester, it confirms other reports that RU-486 causes more bleeding and cramping tha surgical abortion methods.

The researchers acknowledged that it was hard to find women willing to participate in the study, because women have such strong preferences for one abortion method over another—and in this study, that preference was clearly for surgical abortion.

Significantly, the “study also produced evidence that the surgical method is associated with better short term psychological outcome….”

So all of this begs the question: If abortion drugs are more painful and cause more bleeding than surgical abortions, why do abortion providers push them on women so frequently?

Predictably, the answer is money.  Abortion-inducing drugs are more convenient for abortion providers, especially given the fact that providers in the U.S. admittedly administer the drugs in a manner not approved by the Food & Drug Administration (FDA).  For example, the drugs are given to women past the gestational age approved by the FDA, and women are instructed to take the second dose at home (and not under direct physician supervision).  This allows providers to give the drugs to more women in a day than they could otherwise see.  And obviously, abortion providers can provide more women with medical abortion than they can provide with surgical procedures.

Sadly, abortion advocates claim a “need” for medical abortion for women in rural areas, who might not have access to providers of surgical abortion.  So what this means is that women without adequate health care are given a medication that causes more pain and more bleeding than a surgical abortion, and are sent home to deal with it by themselves and outside of a physician’s supervision.  This is not health care, and it is not compassionate.  Plain and simple, abortion providers are looking to profit—otherwise, providers would be more concerned for the physical and psychological complications that follow medical abortion.

But abortion is not about women’s health.  It is all about money.

LifeNews.com Note: Mailee Smith is an attorney for Americans United for Life, a pro-life legal group that focuses on national and state legislative matters.