Two stories from today's LifeNews.com about the powerful and dangerous abortion drug, mifepristone, and its irresponsible promotion and use on young women by Planned Parenthood.The first story tells that about 1/4 of all delliberate abortions in the U.S. now involve mifepristone. (These figures do not include all the "secret" abortions which occur with use of birth control pills and other so-called contraceptives.) The second story takes another angle on the release of the same study, highlighting Planned Parenthood's promotion of mifepristone as safe -- this despite the lethal effect it has upon preborn children AND the deaths it has caused to mothers.
* Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A new Planned Parenthood study finds one-fourth of all of the abortions done in the United States now involves the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone. That is the drug that has caused the deaths of more than a dozen women worldwide -- including at least six in the United States -- and has injured more than 1,200 nationwide according to figures from 2007. Sales of the abortion drug Mifeprex, the first part of the two-part RU 486 abortion pill process, rose 16.5 percent last year and 184,000 women used the drug.
The Planned Parenthood study also finds the abortion drug, which can be used at around seven weeks into pregnancy, now accounts for about one-third of all early-term abortions. The study, which will be reported in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine, analyzed 228,000 abortions at Planned Parenthood centers between 2005 and 2008.
Chris Gacek, of the pro-life Family Research Council, was not surprised by the increased use of the abortion drug. "I don't think at this point we're going to do anything" to try to limit its use, he said. "It's hard to know whether this increases the (total) number of abortions."
Last year, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a former Planned Parenthood research arm, released a report showing the number of abortions has declined to record lows in the United States. But, women having abortions were more frequently using the dangerous abortion drug. According to AGI, about 13 percent of all abortions involve mifepristone. The report also showed that 57 percent of places that do abortions now have the abortion drug, compared with just 33 percent in 2001.
* Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Planned Parenthood has released a new study it claims shows the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone is now safe, but the study ignores how Planned Parenthood's own protocol resulted in the deaths of women. The research, done at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country, supposedly shows that the new way of giving women the abortion drug orally, instead of vaginally, boosts its safety. "This is the first really huge documentation of how safe and effective medical abortion is," said Dr. Beverly Winikoff, a professor of family health and population at Columbia University. "The technology is very good and very well used in this country, and probably will be used more and more." The study's lead researcher, nurse practitioner Mary Fjerstad, added, "We decided we needed to make a safe procedure even safer."
When used normally, RU 486 involves a two drug combination involves mifepristone, which deprives the developing newborn baby of food and water and essentially starves the child to death. The second drug, misoprostol, causes contractions to force the woman to birth the dead baby. The abortion business had been telling women to use the drug in a different way than the FDA guidelines suggested and the study showed it contributed to the deaths of six women who got the abortion drug at its centers.
In fact, a June 2008 University of Michigan study suggests Planned Parenthood is at fault in the deaths of women in the United States from the abortion drug. It wasn't until four California women all died within a week of using the abortion drug they received from Planned Parenthood abortion businesses that it changed its policy to conform to the FDA protocol.
