A new study conducted by researcher James Trussell from Princeton University claims the abortion pill RU 486, mifepristone, is safe. The study also claims the Planned Parenthood abortion business is dispensing it safely to women.
These claims come even as the FDA itself has released information showing 14 women have died from using the dangerous abortion drug and thousands have been injured — some of them with life-threatening injuries. Moreover, the Planned Parenthood abortion business put women at risk by failing to follow FDA guidelines for the proper dispensing of mifepristone.
The study comes from the abortion industry itself as Trussell is a member of the National Medical Committee of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and another of the authors receives compensation from Danco Labs: the U.S. distributor of the abortion pill.
According to a Reuters report on the new study:
Less than one percent of women getting a medication-induced abortion at Planned Parenthood had a serious side effect or a failed abortion, according to a new study.
Researchers found the rate of abortion-related complications sending women to the emergency room or requiring a blood transfusion, for example, was one in 625 during 2009 and 2010.
“At Planned Parenthood, medical abortion is extremely safe,” said reproductive health researcher James Trussell from Princeton University in New Jersey, who worked on the study.
“The most common adverse outcome is just continuing pregnancy,” he added. “It doesn’t work 100 percent of the time.”
The study found that, of the sample of women used, one died from the abortion drug and eight women have an ecoptic pregnancy and could have died. The study, published in Thursday in Obstetrics & Gynecology, also found one woman remained pregnant even after using the RU 486 pill tiwce.
Trussel was a member of an FDA advisory panel that in 2003 recommended that Plan B be sold over the counter and is a strong morning after pill advocate.
Dr. Donna Harrison, a board-certified OBGYN who is the head of AAPLOG, the national organization for pro-life OBGYNS, has said previously that Trussell’s own research on the morning after pill is suspect.
In a previous study, Trussell conveniently changes his message about the Plan B drug’s efficaciousness to fit with the abortion industry’s goal du jour.
Harrison makes the following comment, “[a]nd here, abortion proponents speak out of both sides of their mouth. The quote from Trussell in theNYT article was particularly amusing. If you read his previous research papers, sometimes he claims over 90 percent efficacy from Plan B, and sometimes he claims around 50 percent efficacy. Why these differences? Well, as he so readily admits, you can’t get numbers of 90 percent efficacy without some sort of post-fertilization effect. So when the issue of mechanism of action is raised, suddenly the efficacy for Plan B gets ‘adjusted’ to what would be expected from a drug with no post-fertilization effect. But, when issues of funding arise . . . well Plan B becomes much more effective.”
The actual data from the Food and Drug Administration present a much different picture than this biased study.
Following its approval during the Clinton administration, the FDA released a report in 2006 that received widespread attention for showing more than 1,100 women had been subjected to “adverse effects” resulting from their taking the abortion drug mifepristone, commonly known a RU 486. Pro-life advocates have waited five years for the FDA to come out with a new report of problems associated with the drug — despite mounting evidence that the abortion drug continues to kill and injure women across the globe.
The FDA, with no fanfare, released a new report, dated April 30, 2011. The report indicates 14 women in the United States alone have died from using the mifepristone abortion drug and 2,207 women have been injured by it.
Of the women experiencing medical and physical problems resulting from the abortion drug, 612 women required hospitalizations, 339 experienced blood loss significant enough to require a transfusion, 256 experienced infections and 48 women experienced what the FDA labeled as “severe infections.” Given that the RU 486 abortion drug caused sepsis, a potentially lethal infection that resulted in the deaths of women from around the world, the “serious infections” were very likely life-threatening situations.
“Severe infections generally involve death or hospitalization for at least 2-3 days, intravenous antibiotics for at least 24 hours, total antibiotic usage for at least 3 days, and any other physical or clinical findings, laboratory data or surgery that suggest a severe infection,” the FDA report states.
Women developing infections from usage of the RU 486 abortion drug experienced endometritis (involving the lining of the womb), pelvic inflammatory disease (involving the nearby reproductive organs such as the fallopian tubes or ovaries), and pelvic infections with sepsis (a serious systemic infection that has spread beyond the reproductive organs).
The FDA figures also reveal that abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood are still misusing the abortion drug.
Despite the FDA indicating, “Administration of mifepristone and misoprostol is contraindicated in patients with confirmed or suspected ectopic pregnancy (a pregnancy outside the uterus,” the abortion drug was given to women in 58 cases where they had an ectopic pregnancy.
Jeanne Monahan of the Family Research Council commented on the new report.
“The dangerous complications associated with this drug continue include hemorrhaging and infection. In the U.S., at least 612 women have been hospitalized after taking RU-486; and at least 339 women required blood transfusions as a result of serious blood loss after taking the abortion drug,” she said.
“Marketing the abortion drug as simple and painless, such as taking an aspirin, is dangerously misleading to women. RU-486 is in a class of drugs categorized as selective progesterone receptor modulators, which, in addition to blocking progesterone necessary for the developing baby, also suppresses a woman’s immune system. Additionally, it is sometimes the case that the remains of the pregnancy are not entirely expelled from a woman’s uterus, causing infection and other problems,” she said.
Monahan also complained about the usage of the mifepristone abortion drug in cases where an ectopic pregnancy was present.
“Clearly highlighting the need for more stringent medical oversight, the report also indicates that 58 women were prescribed RU-486 despite having ectopic pregnancies,” she said. “To state it more clearly, a woman who has an ectopic pregnancy and takes the RU 486 regimen places her life in danger.”
Monahan says the dangerous status of the abortion drug is not limited to the United States.
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“It is not only women in the U.S. who are suffering as a result of chemical abortion, it is a worldwide trend. A recent Australian health department audit of nearly 10,000 abortions performed in 2009 and 2010 compared the safety of RU-486 with surgical abortion, with the outcome being in the words of one major media outlet “The Abortion Pill ‘Less Safe than Surgery,’” Monahan explained. “The Australian report showed that 1 in 18 patients who used RU-486 had to be re-admitted to hospitals (a total of 5.7% of women vs. only .4% of surgical abortions.) The same study revealed that as many as 33% of women who had second trimester RU-486 abortions required some form of surgical intervention.”
The report also indicated approximately 1.52 million women have used the dangerous abortion drug through the end of April 2001.
“Despite the seriousness and intensity of adverse effects related to RU-486, use of this form of abortion is on the rise, and frequently the regimen is dispensed with less medical oversight than surgical abortion,” Monahan said. “Even more troubling, nationally and internationally, “telemed” dissemination of RU-486 is increasing. Telemed abortions involved doctors proscribing RU-486 through Skype or over the Internet rather than during a patient visit.”
“The bottom line is that abortion drugs are not about improving women’s health but are more accurately about advancing a radical pro-abortion agenda regardless of the impact on women’s health, even when it proves deadly,” she concluded.
