Power to the pill

RU-486 is a step toward abortion rights

Last week, with the Diag display by the Genocide Awareness Project, abortion was the hot topic on campus. This debate is certain to escalate after the Food and Drug Administration approved a pill to induce abortions in women. RU-486, which will be marketed as Mifeprex, has been available in Europe for years. But politics had forced the FDA to test and retest the pill, despite numerous studies demonstrating its high success rate and relative safety. Regardless of this political pressure, the FDA will allow sale of the beneficial pill. RU-486's arrival on our shores is long overdue.

The primary advantage of RU-486 is that it allows women to have an abortion early in their pregnancy through a non-invasive process. Most women will be able to take the pill in their physician's office. The pill is also relatively safe, requiring further surgery in only five to eight percent of cases.

Eligible women for this pill must have experienced their most recent period less than seven weeks prior. The next step is to consult a doctor, who will provide them with the pill and sign them up for a mandatory check-up two weeks later. If the pill fails to work, doctors will perform a standard surgical abortion.

Often lost in the argument is the right of a female to do what she chooses with her body. Rather than having politics dictate a woman's right to control her body - which is her property - a woman should be able to decide if she wishes to undergo an abortion. The new Mifeprex pill allows more private abortions. Like the 72 hour morning-after pill, it places more responsibility and opportunity in the hands of the people who most deserve to determine what to do about pregnancies.

Women will have abortions, regardless of whether abortion is legal. To prevent a return to the days of back-alley abortions, it makes sense to provide a safe, legal alternative. The U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision is approaching its 30th anniversary. The debut of the new pill could be, along with the opening of the first abortion clinic, Roe v. Wade and the debut of the "morning-after" pill, one of the landmark events in female reproductive liberation.

Adding to the credibility of RU-486 is the fact that it has been available in European countries for more than ten years. In France, studies have found that RU-486 has not replaced traditional surgeries as the most common form of abortion and has not increased the number of abortions as a whole.

Despite this, George W. Bush, to gain favor with the more conservative voters, has vowed to ban RU-486 should he be elected president. Rarely has such a pill undergone so much scrutiny, enduring attacks against all medical logic. Abortion is legal in the U.S. And abortions should be as safe a medical procedure as possible. The pill ads privacy to the list.