Land, others urge action on RU 486

By Tom Strode - Oct 14, 2005

ERLC President Richard Land and six other pro-life, pro-family leaders have called on a House of Representatives committee chairman to make a bill to remove the abortion drug RU 486 from the market a priority.

Land and his allies wrote Rep. Joe Barton, R.-Texas, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a Sept. 23 letter urging him to hold a hearing on the RU 486 Suspension and Review Act, H.R. 1079, and to schedule a vote by the panel soon. The legislation would halt sale of RU 486 while the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug is reviewed.

The bill is known as Holly’s Law in memory of Holly Patterson, 18, who died of a systemic infection in 2003 after obtaining RU 486 from a Planned Parenthood clinic in Hayward, Calif.

Danco Laboratories in New York revealed in July that two California women had died, one in 2004 and the other in 2005, after using the two-step drug regimen to abort their unborn children. Danco has acknowledged two other California users of RU 486 died in 2003 and a Canadian woman died after its use in 2001. Other reports have cited additional deaths by RU 486 users—three in Europe, one in the Philippines and another in the United States.

“[W]e believe that the growing body of evidence suggests that RU 486 is dangerous to the women who use it,” the letter said. “The effects of RU 486 on women’s health have never been adequately assessed. H.R. 1079 is a logical response to the acknowledged role of this drug in the deaths of a number of women and to the mounting concern that this drug poses significant health risks to every woman who uses it.”

Joining Land on the letter were Tom Minnery, vice president of Focus on the Family; Beverly LaHaye, chairman of Concerned Women for America; Phyllis Schlafly, president of Eagle Forum; Paul Weyrich, national chairman of Coalitions for America; Mariam Bell, public policy director for Prison Fellowship, and Connie Mackey, vice president of Family Research Council.

The House bill has 77 cosponsors, while a Senate version, S. 511, has only 11 cosponsors.

RU 486, or mifepristone, is used as the first part of a process normally occurring in the first seven weeks of pregnancy. That initial action causes the lining of the uterus to release the embryonic child. A second drug, known as misoprostol, is taken two days after mifepristone and causes the uterus to contract, expelling the baby.

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