Pro-Life Groups Worry FDA Won’t be Impartial on RU 486 Abortion Drug 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 8, 2005
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Pro-life groups are worried that the Food and Drug Administration won’t be impartial next year when it meets with Centers for Disease Control officials to determine why four California women died from using the dangerous abortion drug RU 486.
With more information coming to light about the lethal bacterial infections resulting from the drugs that quickly killed the women, more members of Congress may sign onto legislation that asks the agency to take the abortion drug off the market.
Carrie Gordon Earll, a senior analyst for Focus on the Family, told The Hill newspaper she doesn’t think they’ll do that in part because of a report last week the CDC issued in the New England Journal of Medicine saying the abortion drug presented a "low" risk for women despite the deaths and more than 650 complications.
That the abortion drug is still being given to women "does make you wonder if they are taking this as seriously as they would if it were another substance" she told The Hill.
She said other drugs with similar safety issues have been banned.
Earll told the Congressional newspaper that she thinks many career FDA staff are pro-abortion and not interested in prohibiting the drug because of their views.
Should the FDA remove Mifeprix from the market, abortion advocates would howl in protest and say the Bush administration was manipulating the agency.
In fact, Ted Miller, spokesman for NARAL, accused the Bush administration of undue influence already because the FDA has delayed making a decision about selling the morning after pill over the counter.
That the FDA has repeatedly strengthened the warning labels on RU 486 and has not adopted the recent CDC report as its own view tells him the agency is still under the Bush administration’s thumb.
"Is the Bush administration doing this for political or scientific reasons," he told The Hill.
Marc Fischer, the CDC epidemiologist who was the lead author of the study told The Hill his article wasn’t meant to provide the FDA with guidance on its decisions about the drugs.
"Our purpose was just to make this information available to people," he said.
