As the Food and Drug Administration’s September 30 deadline to approve mifepristone (formerly known as RU-486, the French abortion pill) looms large, abortion rights advocates are fearful that anti-abortion politics will cause the FDA to further delay approving the drug, or so severely restrict its use that women and their doctors will be reluctant to use it as an alternative to surgical abortion. Mifepristone, which has been used as a safe, more accessible and more private alternative to surgical abortion by women in France and England for a decade is still not available in this country. “I don’t think that the public understands that because of politics, we are falling way behind other countries in terms of access to medical abortion” said Francine Coeytaux, co-founder of the Pacific Institute for Women’s Health in Los Angeles. Clinical evidence shows that mifepristone has promise as a potential treatment for meningioma (brain tumors), ovarian cancer, fibroid tumors and other serious diseases that afflict women. Abortion-rights advocates feel that the window of opportunity for approving mifepristone may close soon if Republicans take control of the White House next year.
The Feminist Majority Foundation has launched an Emergency Campaign to urge the FDA to approve this valuable drug and provide American women with this safe, private abortion option. The Feminist Majority Foundation also runs a Mifepristone Compassionate Use Program designed to provide patients suffering from Ovarion Cancer, Fibroid Tumors, Meningioma and a host of other diseases with mifepristone, as it has been proven in clinical trials to be an effective treatment for these and other types of cancers.
