Illinois Planned Parenthood Starts Selling Dangerous Abortion Drug in Springfield
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 2, 2010
Springfield, IL (LifeNews.com) — The abortion drug RU 486 has killed more than a dozen women worldwide and injured more than 1,100 in the United States alone according to FDA numbers from a few years ago. But that hasn’t stopped Planned Parenthood Springfield from putting women at risk by selling the mifepristone abortion pill.
The central Illinois abortion business is starting to sell the abortion drug this week at its 1000 E. Washington St. facility for $435 each.
"It’s a legal service," Stephani Cox, a nurse practitioner who represents Chicago-based Planned Parenthood of Illinois, told the State Journal Register. "I’m hoping that women in the area who need this service will quickly realize that they can get it locally."
About 400 women get surgical abortions every year in Springfield, but the closest facilities selling the dangerous abortion drug are in Peoria, Champaign, Granite City and St. Louis.
The mifepristone abortion drug is a two-part process with a pill that causes the unborn child to starve to death and another that causes a miscarriage of the dead baby’s body.
The drug has killed eight women alone in the United States because Planned Parenthood previously told women using it to use the drug vaginally instead of orally. That causes the introduction of bacteria that resulted in lethal infections causing their deaths.
Although Planned Parenthood eventually changed its protocol to follow the FDA suggestion to take the drug orally, it still dispenses improper doses of the drug that could still place women at risk.
The abortion business says it will give the drug to women for abortions up to the ninth week of pregnancy, well after the heart of the unborn child has begun to beat.
Shirley Caldwell Smith, president of Springfield Right to Life, talked with the newspaper and said pro-life advocates would continue protesting at Planned Parenthood and helping women find positive alternatives.
The pro-life group has paid for radio commercials to educate women about the dangers of the drug.
Planned Parenthood first announced the abortion drug would be available last September, saying "After a careful assessment of the needs of patients and the community, PPIL decided to expand services to include medication abortion so that women will have more choices available to them."
According to FDA reports as of December 2006, there have now been eight known deaths associated with mifepristone in the U.S., nine life-threatening incidents, 116 blood transfusions, and 232 hospitalizations. In total, more than 1,100 women have had medical problems after using the drug as of that date.
In January 2008, Danco Laboratories announced that approximately 13 percent of all abortions in the United States involve mifepristone — a number that may seem low but it is double the number of women who used the abortion drug in 2001.
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