Physician Warns Against Hidden Dangers of Abortion Drug
by Mary Rettig
April 6, 2005
(AgapePress) - A recent study of vital statistics from Alaska found that an increasing number of women are turning to pills to abort their pregnancies, and a spokesman for the Christian Medical & Dental Associations says this is not just an Alaskan phenomenon.Dr. David Hager is a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. He says the use of the abortion pill commonly known as RU-486 is a way many women try to avoid the trauma of the surgical procedure. Unfortunately, he notes, these women may suffer unforeseen consequences.
Hager says RU-486, an abortion drug marketed in the U.S. as Mifeprex, was rushed through the approval process. The few test subjects were under a doctor's care the entire time, the Christian physician contends. Now that the abortion drug has been approved, however, he says not all the appropriate tests are being done, and some serious dangers remain.
"One of the major risks is if this is not a uterine pregnancy," the doctor says, "and is instead a tubal or ectopic pregnancy. Mifeprex has no effect on that. The symptoms that result from a pregnancy loss or abortion are basically the same symptoms as those of an ectopic pregnancy."
The danger, the CMDA member explains, is that a woman could take the RU-486 pills and believe she is aborting her baby, when in fact she is really rupturing a tubal pregnancy. That complication is serious and could lead to chronic injury, infertility, or even death.
And not all the dangers of abortion are physical. When women have been surveyed who have gone in for surgical abortions, Hager says many report that the feeling they had is that they had to do this, or rather, have it done -- that somebody else did the procedure to them at their request. Now however, he notes, many women are "realizing that they are actually taking the medication themselves -- that they are causing the abortion themselves."
The women who abort by pill can no longer convince themselves that blame for the abortion can be placed elsewhere, Hager asserts. He says some medical researchers believe this can lead to higher rates of emotional distress and post-abortion syndrome.
Mary Rettig, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
