Associated Press Dismisses Abortion Drug Deaths as FDA Meeting Begins 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 11, 2006
Atlanta, GA (LifeNews.com) — As a joint FDA-CDC meeting begins to discuss the reasons why the abortion drug RU 486 is responsible for the deaths of five women in the United States in the last three years, the media is already doing its part to dismiss any link between the women’s deaths and the abortion drug.
The Associated Press released a story Monday morning all but ruling out any connection between the abortion drug and the women’s death.
Researchers have said that the abortion drug caused the women to develop infections from common bacteria, Clostridium sordellii, that normally poses few problems for women.
But the Associated Press said the bacterial infection may be unrelated to abortion and cited other deaths from it among women who did not use the abortion drug.
AP wrote that interviews with "women’s health experts" confirmed that the abortion drug was not responsible for the women’s death, but rather the bacteria itself. "Clostridium sordellii has killed at least 11 other women … That’s more than twice as many as have died of infection after taking the abortion pill."
"The numbers suggest the bacterium’s threat, while still limited, could be broader than previously thought," AP reported.
However, the so-called "women’s health experts were not doctors who specialize in reproductive medicine, but pro-abortion activists.
AP interviewed, Susan Wood, a former FDA official who backs abortion and resigned from the agency when it delayed in approving a request to allow sales of the morning after pill over the counter. She wanted the drug approved immediately and dismissed the FDA’s concerns about how the drug affected teenagers.
Wood told AP, "Is this association between use of Mifeprex and infection with C. sordellii … or is it something more general?” and the news service reported she suggested the latter.
The other "expert" AP interviewed was Beverly Winikoff, an abortion activist who worked to bring the abortion drug to the United States. Echoing the chorus of abortion advocates who claim the abortion pill has nothing to do with the deaths of six women in the U.S. or five internationally.
“That’s 11 other cases that have nothing to do with abortion — they’re other obstetric events," she said about other women who have died after contracting the lethal bacterial infection without using the abortion drug.
Only later in the story, after the case was made that the abortion drug was not responsible for the women’s deaths, does AP report on findings from Dr. Ralph Miech of Brown University, who investigated and determined that the abortion drug suppresses a woman’s immune system, allowing the normally non-fatal bacteria to flourish.
Brown also suggested that the presence of leftover tissue from the aborted baby gave the bacteria a food source to thrive on. Ironically, the first part of the two-drug abortion process deprives the developing baby of the nutrition she needs to survive.
