Apparently
Orson Welles once quipped: “I
drag my myth around with me”. Based on the most recent news about the RU486
abortion drug (also known as Mifepristone, Mifegyne or Mifeprex) one can’t help
but sense that the proponents of RU486 abortions are going to have to start
dragging their myths around with them if they wish to continue maintaining a
staunch support for increased availability and use of RU486.

A
research survey conducted in Australia has found that RU486 chemical abortions are actually more likely to end problematically
for women than surgical ones are. The study of 7000 abortions carried out in
Australia in 2009 found that 3.3 per cent of women using RU486 had later turned
up at emergency departments to seek treatment for problems, whereas only 2.2
per cent of women who had undergone surgical abortions had done so.

The
survey also found that 5.7 per cent of women undergoing early medical abortions
using drugs had to be admitted to hospital for post-operative treatment,
whereas only 0.4 per cent of women undergoing surgical abortions had need to do
so.

This
survey’s bad news about RU486 was actually foreshadowed last October with the release of other statistics from the Therapeutic Goods
Administration in Australia, which revealed that 110 cases of "adverse
effects" were reported in 2009 by doctors authorised to prescribe RU486 in
Australia. These adverse effects included the retention of placental remains
and other “products of conception” -- a clinical euphemism for “human fetal
remains”.

The
information released by the Therapeutic Goods Administration also revealed that
there were another 14 Australian cases where RU486 had failed and subsequent
surgical abortions were carried out to complete these botched chemical
abortions.

Also
recently came the tragic news that RU486 has been linked to yet another female
death, this time involving a 16-year old Portuguese girl. According to ANSAmed,
the girl died as a result of a septic shock caused by Clostridium Sordellii, an
infection that until now had only been diagnosed in abortion drug related
deaths in the United States. The 16-year-old’s death was announced at the 21st
European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, which was
held in Milan last month.

The
truly tragic death of this young Portuguese girl (which, as stated above, is
not the first one) provides yet more ammunition against the current attempts to
have RU486 made more widely and easily available to women and girls --
something that the NZ Family Planning Association has been trying to do for
several years now here in New Zealand.

You
see, apart from it’s quick and straightforward nature, the other key selling
point that is constantly touted by the advocates of RU486 abortion is the claim
that early chemical abortions are far safer than later
surgical ones. This mantra of “increased safety” is now looking more and more
to be a claim that is completely without merit.

Unless
there has been some major methodological flaw in the recent Australian survey
showing a greater incidence of emergency department visits and post-operative
hospital treatments after RU486 use, it would seem almost certain that RU486
advocates no longer have much of a leg to stand on when they suggest that the
drug is a safer alternative to surgical abortion.

This
point becomes even more salient when you consider that its advocates regularly
talk about wider availability of RU486 being of greatest benefit to women in
rural or remote areas, where hospital based abortion services are not readily
available. Based on the latest Australian data, it seems that these are the
very women who would be at greatest risk if they were to use this method, due
to the fact that emergency hospital care wouldn’t be easily accessible to them
should they experience any complications.

These
latest and very serious challenges to the safety of RU486 abortions also raise
major red flags in relation to the issue of abortions carried out on young
girls without parental knowledge or consent. This issue raised its head here in
New Zealand recently when one of our large Sunday papers ran a lead front page
story about a New Zealand mother who was angry and upset about the fact that
her 16-year-old daughter’s high school had procured an abortion for the girl
without the mother’s knowledge or consent.

If
the proponents of RU486 abortion get their way, its availability and use will
become far more common and widespread, which means that any abortion taking
place without parental knowledge or consent could involve the use of RU486.
This would mean that not only would we have secret abortions on young girls
taking place, but they would now be secret abortions involving risky drugs.

What
happens to a young girl who has one of these secretly procured abortions on a
Thursday or Friday, and then begins to suffer RU486 complications over the
weekend when she has no school counsellor to seek out for help?

The
prospect of a secret abortion ending in the death of a teenager is a truly
frightening and horrific one, but we need to face up to the fact that the
widespread availability of RU486, coupled with a lack of parental consent laws
would be the perfect storm for just such a tragedy to begin occurring on a
regular basis.

Brendan Malone is a media
spokesperson and educator for the John Paul II Centre for Life in Christchurch,
New Zealand. He also runs The
Culture Vulture blog.