Popular abortion drug isn’t safe

Drew Halfmann’s opinion column (April 7) praises the FDA’s relaxed standards for the abortion drug mifepristone, alluding to “new scientific evidence” without offering any.

The FDA ratified Planned Parenthood’s failure to abide by the FDA’s own guidelines, rewarding that abortion business for offering medication abortions beyond the previously allowed 49 days to 70 days, and for using non-physician personnel to dispense them. Just approve what Planned Parenthood is doing anyway! One more political decision by the Obama administration.

Mifespristone has a high failure rate and has been shown by numerous studies to be far more dangerous than surgical abortion in the first trimester (though the latter is far from safe.) The FDA admitted in 2011 that 14 women in the U.S. have died from use of mifepristone, and that many others have been harmed.

Hemorrhage, for example, is far more common in drug-induced abortions than in surgical ones. It needs prompt medical attention. A Planned Parenthood study admits one woman is seriously injured daily from the abortion pill, yet the organization wants to expand access to the drug in ways ever more distant from connection to a physician, its ideal being prescription by teleconferencing.

This story was originally published April 14, 2016 at 6:24 AM with the headline "Popular abortion drug isn’t safe."