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| Local Time: 8:05 AM September 9, 2010 |
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| Local Time: 8:05 AM September 9, 2010 |
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“Safe and Effective”: How Does It Feel to Be Lied to By Planned Parenthood? Tuesday, March 16, 2010
In my last column, I recounted the experience of a former Planned Parenthood clinic director, Abby Johnson, who walked out of her abortion clinic and into the pro-life movement after watching an abortion on an ultrasound monitor. After watching a baby destroyed on the monitor before her eyes, Abby said, “The first thing I thought of was all the women I’d lied to.” But we all know that lies beget lies. Abby was speaking of surgical abortion and Planned Parenthood’s insistence that a baby is only a “blob of tissue” or the “products of conception.” Increasingly, though, Planned Parenthood affiliate abortion clinics are pushing the so-called “chemical abortion” option with the dangerous RU-486 drug, now re-labeled Mifepristone or “Mifeprex” for easier marketing. A chemical RU-486 abortion costs less for Planned Parenthood, but clinics typically pocket the markup, charging about the same – roughly $350 to $650 – as for a surgical abortion at the same gestation. And what’s Planned Parenthood’s track record for dealing honestly with women about the medical risks and consequences of RU-486 abortion? Not much better. Enter Angie Jackson, a 27-year-old self-professed “Anti-Theist” micro-blogger who recently decided to blog her RU-486 abortion, obtained courtesy of her local Planned Parenthood clinic. Angie probably relied on Planned Parenthood’s assertion that the drug is “safe and effective” – and the FDA, in approving it, deemed it so. But Planned Parenthood has never felt bound by the dosage requirements and conditions the FDA also placed upon providers of the drug as part and parcel of this determination. The FDA approved RU-486 for administration up to seven weeks after the mother’s last menstrual period; in fact, both FDA and Danco Laboratories, the maker of RU-486, require Planned Parenthood and other abortionists as a condition of obtaining it to have both provider and patient sign a “Patient Agreement” that stipulates, “I believe I am no more than 49 days (7 weeks) pregnant.” Not feeling beholden to such commitments, Planned Parenthood clinics routinely use it up to nine weeks, even though the risk that the drug will fail and require a second, surgical abortion risk many fold in those additional two weeks. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the “Mother Ship” of Planned Parenthood affiliates nationwide, flatly states on its web site that “[Mifepristone] can be used up to 63 days – 9 weeks – after the first day of a woman’s last period” – without mentioning that the FDA imposes stricter limits. Planned Parenthood also reassures women, “You can feel confident in knowing that medication abortion with the abortion pill is very effective. It works about 97 out of every 100 times.” Well, a little over 9 out of 10 times, to be more precise, but that figure drops dramatically to a nearly 1 in 4 failure rate when taken two weeks over the FDA-prescribed limit of 49 days. Is it possible that this of no moment to Planned Parenthood, since when the chemical abortion fails, it can then charge a woman a second time for a surgical abortion to finish the job? Planned Parenthood clinics also routinely ignore the FDA’s directive that an RU-486 abortion must involve three office visits: the first to provide the abortion-inducing Mifepristone drug, the second to administer Misoprostol, which causes contractions to expel the dead baby, and the third to have a physician verify the abortion was complete. Planned Parenthood patients – like Angie – virtually never get three visits, and frequently don’t even get two, because multiple appointments drive up the abortionist’s costs. Since abortion is considered a dead-end, disreputable practice by most physicians, doctors are rarely seen providing chemical abortions in Planned Parenthood facilities. So the task of counseling women about the considerable risks of RU-486 (the drug has been linked to at least eight deaths and 116 women who required massive blood transfusions) falling to physician’s assistants, nurse practitioners and other second-tier providers in many clinics. This in spite of the FDA’s warning that “Mifeprex may be administered only… by or under the supervision of a physician.” Why? Because only a physician is able to “assess the gestational age of an embryo and to diagnose ectopic pregnancies, as the FDA requires, and “Physicians must also be able to provide surgical intervention in cases of incomplete abortion or severe bleeding.” Planned Parenthood sees nothing wrong with their setup, naturally, even arguing in an Arizona court last year that nurses are better than doctors at counseling patients about risks because they are better “listeners.” Such is Planned Parenthood’s commitment to “safe and effective” care for women that Planned Parenthood’s Ohio affiliate actually went to court against the Buckeye State challenging the FDA’s guidelines, with the court ruling that state law required Planned Parenthood to follow the dosing requirements the FDA relied on in declaring it “safe and effective.” Planned Parenthood’s web site also minimizes the severe bleeding and cramping that make an RU-486 abortion a “horrible” experience in the description of many women. “It usually lasts a few hours,” the nation’s largest abortion provider claims, “for others, it takes longer. But most women abort within a few days.” Again, Planned Parenthood misleads women: the clinical trials on which the FDA approval was based reported bleeding for an average of nine to 16 days, with up to 8% of women bleeding for over a month. So why do women choose chemical abortion? “Many women feel it’s more ‘natural’ – they feel it is more like miscarriage,” Planned Parenthood effuses. “Women may feel more in control…” Did Angie the “Anti-Theist” feel like a “natural woman” who is “in control” of her body while in the throes of RU-486-induced cramping, bleeding, nausea and pain? Angie blogged her abortion experience for eight days, from Friday evening the 19th of February through the afternoon of Saturday the 27th, over a week later. (“It’s just taking forever,” she wrote on the 22nd, three days into it. “This has turned into a marathon I hadn’t expected”” she blogged the next day. That evening, she said, “This has gone on so much longer than I thought it would (and grown so much bigger and stranger).” She noted that she was averaging 2-3 painkillers a day. By the 27th, Angie asked, “Aren’t we done yet?” She started bleeding “a LOT more” that day (emphasis hers), and she had her “worst” cramps that day as well. Just before she gave up blogging about it, Angie wrote, “This is definitely the worst pain so far” – 8 days after starting. In the end, how “safe” and “effective” did Angie find an RU-486 abortion to be? Was Angie “safe” through a week-long (or more) incapacitation? Safe from what? As for “effectiveness” – would you take a drug that put you out of business for over a week if it failed roughly one in four times – as RU-486 does at Planned Parenthood’s self-imposed 9-week outer limit – only to leave you right where you started? As many more women like Angie find out what it’s like to be lied to by Planned Parenthood, and broadcast the news via social media to a far wider audience than streetcorner gossip and the telephone ever allowed, it will become harder and harder for abortionists to sell the line that destroying human life is a “natural” process of “a few hours” work. Steven H. Aden serves as Senior Legal Counsel to the Alliance Defense Fund. Mr. Aden directs ADF’s litigation efforts in the sanctity of life area from its Washington, DC office.
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