EIGHT YEARS AGO this summer, a young woman from Berkeley named Leona
Benten arrived on a jet at New York's John F. Kennedy International
Airport bearing three little white pills she had picked up in London.
Alerted to her arrival, customs officials detained her and seized the
illegal pills, not knowing that national media had also been tipped
off about this supposed ``smuggling'' attempt. The story was Page One
news around the world, for this was no ordinary illegal drug.
The pills were a French medication called RU-486. Already legal in
Europe for years, this drug, when prescribed and supervised by a
physician, can be taken within the first two months of an unwanted
pregnancy, thereby producing a ``medical'' abortion. RU-486 had
already been shown to be safe and effective, and womens' health
activists around the country were calling for its approval in the
United States. Besides offering another option for early abortion,
surveys of doctors indicated that it could significantly improve the
problem of lack of access to safe abortion in this country, as some
doctors who did not perform surgical abortions planned to offer the
pill when it became available.
A few years earlier, the French minister of health, when ordering
the drug's approval there, had called it ``the moral property of
women.'' Politics, however, kept the
landmark drug out of U.S. medical offices.
``Right to life'' activists threatened politicians and drug
companies with boycotts and even violence should the drug be brought
here.
Then-President Bush took the extraordinary step of explicitly
banning the drug. To counter this, pro-choice physicians and
activists gained the endorsement of RU-486 by the American Medical
Association -- hardly a radical women's rights organization -- as
well as that of many other politicians and other health groups. All
to no avail.
In San Francisco, a group of women's health clinicians and
activists were increasingly frustrated by the impasse, and so adopted
a kind of ``street theater'' in staging the Benten ``importation.''
As hoped, the resulting media circus and Supreme Court case -- the
court refused Benten's request to get the pills back -- got the
attention of Bill Clinton, then in his first campaign for president,
and he pledged to remove the political obstacles to the pill.
All these years later, American women are still waiting for this
medication, now known as Mifepristone. Now the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration, which has dragged its bureaucratic feet on this topic
for years, threatens to finally approve the pill with so many
restrictions as to effectively keep the pill inaccessible to most
American women.
The proposed restrictions go well beyond what any objective
health-care orga
nization has recommended. They are clearly a concession to
anti-abortion politics, rather than good science and compassion.
For example, forcing doctors to register with the government to
use the pill could be seen as a form of intimidation in a highly
politicized environment where doctors providing abortions have been
threatened, harmed and even murdered.
Ironically, in the interim of the long delay in getting RU-486
approved here, other medications have been tested that essentially
perform the same function. No such restrictions apply for these other
drugs. If a physician is knowledgeable and a woman with an unwanted
pregnancy does not desire a surgical abortion -- and if she is early
enough in her pregnancy -- a
``medical'' (pill-induced) abortion can be made available. But RU-486
has been developed and extensively tested and used for just this
purpose, and it is shameful that we are still a ``second-class''
nation in this regard.
Anyone concerned with women's health and equality, including and
especially our elected representatives, should oppose this latest
``sneak attempt to limit reproductive choice. San Francisco's Board
of Supervisors is considering a resolution by Supervisor Gavin Newsom
that does just that. Our state and federal legislators should follow
suit.
Proper governmental regulation of new medications is indeed crucial.
But politics should not be a controlling factor in setting medical
and public health policies. RU-486 has already been safely and
effectively used by more than half a million women worldwide, without
the kinds of restrictions now proposed here. More than 95 percent of
women who have already used the drug would recommend it to others. It
represents a choice in reproductive options that should be the moral
property of American women, too.
Steve Heilig is on the staff of the San Francisco Medical Society and co-editor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. He is a trustee of Planned Parenthood Golden Gate and was a coordinator of the Benten test case.
©2000 San Francisco Chronicle
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