Posted on 07/18/2005 5:09:44 PM PDT by wagglebee
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Five women who took the abortion pill RU-486 have died from bacterial infections since its U.S. introduction nearly five years ago, the manufacturer reported on Monday.
"No causal relationship between these events" has been established with the drug, also known as Mifeprex or mifepristone, maker Danco Laboratories LLC said.
"Childbirth, menstruation and abortion, whether spontaneous, surgical or medical, all create conditions that can result in serious and sometimes fatal infection, and there is no evidence that Mifeprex and misoprostol present a special risk of infection," the company said in a statement.
Misoprostol is a drug that women must take two days after Mifeprex to complete the abortion.
Danco said it was sending a letter to alert physicians about the cases and updating warning information on the drug's label.
Mifeprex already carries a warning about the possibility that women who take the drug could experience serious and sometimes fatal infections. The company is updating the label to give physicians more information to help them spot the problem, Danco spokeswoman Cynthia Summers said.
"With these very rare infections, we want people to be able to recognize them early," she said.
RU-486 is approved for terminating a pregnancy of 49 days or less. Abortion opponents fought vigorously to keep it off the U.S. market and have asked the FDA to revoke the approval.
More than 460,000 U.S. women have taken Mifeprex since September 2000, Danco said.
One of the deaths occurred during a clinical trial in Canada in 2001, the company said. The other four were reported in California. Two of the California deaths were reported in late 2003, one in early 2004 and one in mid-2005.
Three of the cases involved a rare bacterium known as Clostridium sordellii, Danco's statement said.
Women who take Mifeprex and misoprostol should contact a doctor or visit an emergency room immediately if they experience abdominal pain or discomfort or general malaise more than 24 hours after taking misoprostol, Danco said.
Pro-life ping.
Pro Life Ping.
Aspirin kills far more.
Wrong. This drug always kills one person and occasionally more than one.
Touche. But given that abortion is legal, the most common victim doesn't count in the statistics, so trying to get it restricted on that basis won't work. In terms of risk to the mother, 5 possible deaths over 5 years is insignificant.
Deaths? Due to an abortion pill? Gee, who knew?
The fact that something is legal doesn't mean it is right. This is the same fallacious argument that was used for centuries to justify slavery.
What a shock!! Who would have thought that a pill designed to kill babies would be bad for you?
Where are the ambulance-chasers on this one?
The mere legality of a practice has no bearing on what the citizens of a nation feel about that practice (see "jury nullification" for real-world examples of this). Abortion is the slavery of the 20th (and now, sadly, the 21st) century, and will be looked back by future generations with the same horror and revulsion. Just like with slavery, it is the moral argument that will prove to be the greatest weapon against abortion. And that is why we should never abrogate our right nor will to use it...
The question might be "who really cares what happens to these women who cared not about the deaths of children?"
Well yes, that's true. It was first necessary to convince the public that slaves *were* people. Same thing here; if you want RU-486 banned, you're going to first have to convince a sufficient percentage that abortion (specifically very early-term abortion) is murder. But that has not yet happened, and absent such a consensus the potential risk of RU-486 to the mother is far too low to justify a ban by itself.
Hmmm... call me callous, but I call this poetic justice. My heart cannot bleed over the death of a woman in the process of murdering her unborn child.
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