The Unintended Consequences of Mifepristone: Evidence from the Clinical Trials
Dr. Paul Sullins is an Episcopalian priest turned Catholic teaching at the Life Cycle Institute of the Catholic University of America. I must admit that I am a bit of a fan ever since I used his paper concerning the so-called vocations crisis to illustrate its lack of presence concerning calls for change in the Catholic priesthood. The following is an article in draft form concerning the use of milfepristone (commonly known as RU-486) and it’s effects on mothers who take the abortion pill:
To many who already oppose on religious or cultural grounds the prevalence of abortions in America the new method’s convenience represents but a further trivialization of unborn life. In prospect at least, mifepristone appears to reduce the awesome responsibility of bearing human life to the level of an inconvenient, even minor, malady. Got a headache? Take aspirin. Pregnant? Take mifepristone. That something profound and irreplaceable is lost by the latter action becomes less than apparent, perhaps forgotten. As one prospective medical abortion user explained her understanding of how the drug worked, “If you miss your period and you think that you’re pregnant, you can take a pill in your medicine cabinet and your period will come.”
But you don’t have to be conscientiously opposed to abortion to believe that abortion by pill may make ending pregnancy a little too convenient. France, certainly no pro-life bastion and where medical abortion was approved in 1989, mandates a 7-day waiting period to allow the mother time to reflect before ingesting mifepristone. And many abortion patients in the pre-trials focus groups “were concerned that mifepristone would make the abortion procedure too “easy” and would allow . . . . women to take too lightly the decision to have an abortion.”
Such concerns are meritorious, and no doubt valuable to the larger cultural debate over abortion, but I suggest that they rest on a premise that is at least highly overstated. As I will argue below, evidence from the clinical trials shows clearly that both the delight of abortion advocates and the dismay of abortion opponents are rooted in a rosy misunderstanding of the ease of medical abortion. The extensive body of information on women’s experience with mifepristone in the trials suggests, in fact, that its use is fraught with consequences for the abortion experience that must be at odds with the intentions of its purveyors. Not only is it more difficult than surgery, but medical abortion as used in the trials has the effect of making clear, to some women quite forcefully, the horrible, grisly character of abortion. Furthermore, it requires by medical necessity some features of the abortion experience that abortion opponents have been advocating for years. These unintended consequences are so great, in fact, that if a pro-life advocate were somehow perversely forced to design an abortion regimen, he or she would no doubt include some of the features of abortion by mifepristone.