Groups Say Politics Put RU 486 on the Shelf ... And Politics Keeping It There
by Rusty Pugh and Jody Brown
May 16, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A women's pro-life group says pro-abortion forces and the maker of a dangerous abortion pill don't want the product pulled from the market, even while medical evidence against it mounts. Meanwhile, a government corruption watchdog group says it has proof the Clinton administration inappropriately used its political prowess to put the drug on the shelf in the first place. A public workshop sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was held in Atlanta last week in response to the deaths of more women being attributed to the abortion drug RU 486 or to complications from taking the drug, marketed in the U.S. under the name MifeprexÒ . Scientists exited the meeting in disagreement, some calling for the drug to be pulled from the market entirely, some saying the drug enables a deadly bacterial infection found in the women, and still others declaring such conclusions are at best premature.
Attendees at the meeting included Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America. Wright says RU 486 is known to cause a deadly bacterial infection that is 100 percent fatal to women who contract it. It is shameful, she says, that the drug has not been pulled from the shelves.
Wendy Wright | |
"The abortion industry has a lot invested in RU-486, the abortion drug, and that is because their biggest problem is what they call the 'graying' of the abortion industry," says Wright. "That is, there are not enough doctors willing to do abortions. And so their solution is to have abortion in a pill." The CWA president believes that if the FDA removed this drug from the market, the abortion industry would be forced to own up to something it has denied for years. "[Removing RU 486 from the market] would be a loud and clear message that this drug is very dangerous to women," she says, "and that is something the abortion industry does not want to admit, because then they'd have to admit that abortion itself is very dangerous to women."
The abortion industry, she says, "would rather that women continue to die or suffer life-threatening complications from the abortion pill than to admit that they've been wrong."
Wright believes strongly that the drug's distributor, Danco Laboratories LLC, does not want Mifeprex taken from the shelves because it is the only product it has, and its removal would be a financial disaster for them. But she says the mounting evidence -- some of which is backed by professionals who do not even claim to be pro-life -- makes it clear that RU 486 should be pulled immediately before more women, and their unborn children, die.
Let the Record Show ...
RU 486 came onto the U.S. market amidst controversy. It was approved by the FDA in the waning days of the Clinton administration, which was criticized soundly by pro-life groups for its aggressive push to get the drug to market before the two-term president left office. The FDA was accused of short-cutting its own approval guidelines in response to that push.
Shortly before last week's meeting in Atlanta, a public-interest group in Washington, DC, released a special report it says reveals a political drive by the FDA and the Clinton White House to bring RU 486 to the market. Titled "The Clinton RU 486 Files" [PDF], the report from Judicial Watch documents a legal, political, and press strategy for doing just that, says the group.
"As our report shows, the Clinton administration pushed the abortion pill through the [FDA's] approval process in order to appease the abortion lobby," says Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. "These new documents prove the RU 486 approval process was infected by raw politics."
According to Judicial Watch, documents obtained from the National Archives at the Clinton Presidential Library under the Freedom of Information Act show the following:
- Shortly after his election to the Oval Office, Bill Clinton ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to coordinate the marketing of RU 486 as his first official act in office. Within one month, the commissioner of the FDA had met with drug's manufacturer and parent company.
- The companies behind the drug were strong-armed, through pressure from U.S. government officials, into changing their policies in order to make the drug available in the U.S.
- Because it played an active role in brokering a deal between pharmaceutical firms and an abortion rights foundation, the FDC compromised its role as an objective reviewer in the approval process. Specifically, Judicial Watch notes the FDA's five standard requirements for certifying a drug "safe and effective" were circumvented to rush RU 486 to market.
Judicial Watch describes the entire effort as a "reckless drive" by the Clinton administration to get the abortion pill to the marketplace. "Congress and other authorities should launch appropriate investigations," says Fitton. "This dangerous abortion pill needs to be pulled off the market immediately."
Concerned Women for America's Lanier Swann does not seem surprised by the report about the Clinton administration's role in the controversy. "These new documents verify what we've been saying all along: The Clinton administration turned a blind eye to women's safety in order to accommodate pro-abortion advocates,' says the CWA's director of government relations.
