RU486: What they don't want you to know

I recently visited Ljubljana, capital city of Slovenia, to help a newly established group called Bozji Otroci protest against the bi-annual conference for the International Federation of Abortion and Contraception Practitioners (FIAPAC).

On my return, as I skimmed the FIAPAC website, what caught my eye was an image of some women holding banners, protesting for abortion. Underneath it read, "25 years of Mifegyne". Mifegyne is also known as Mifepristone or RU486. In this document, I saw the man who ‘discovered’ RU486, Professor Etienne-Emile Baulieu, being described as the "father" of Mifegyne.

As I read on, the availability of RU486 was described as if it were food and water for the starving,

"French Minister of health at that time Claude Évin explained "I could not permit the abortion debate to deprive women of a product that represents medical progress. From the moment Government approval for the drug was granted, RU486 became the moral property of women, not just the property of a drug company."

However, I felt a swell of pride as I read references to pro-lifers, such as one doctor who rightfully told Baulieu that he was responsible for more deaths than Stalin and Hitler put together. And so he is. Baulieu’s response was to laugh, "since it was so stupid", he said. In fact, in England and Wales alone, 190,000 abortions were performed on unborn babies in 2013, and 49% (according to government statistics) of these were medical abortions, i.e. using RU486.

That is just one year in England and Wales, but the devastation which has been wrought worldwide by RU486 must be huge, since there are around 42 million abortions in the world every year (that we know of). Medical abortions are being preferred more and more over surgical abortions because they are cheaper and less time-consuming. When surgical abortions are performed in a hospital, for example, those theatres cannot be used for other operations. In private ‘clinics’, such as BPAS and Marie Stopes, no abortionist is needed for medical abortions.

The document goes on to state:

"Millions of women worldwide have used Mifegyne® and a prostaglandin analogue to terminate pregnancy with impressive safety and efficacy"

In 1990, the chairman of Roussel Uclaf (the company which produces RU486), Edouard Sakiz, said of the drug,

"As abortifacient procedures go RU486 is not at all easy to use. In fact it is more complex to use than the technique of vacuum extraction...a woman who wants to end her pregnancy has to "live" with her abortion for at least a week using this technique. It's an appalling psychological ordeal"

At this point, it would be useful to quote from the experiences of mothers who have had medical abortions using RU486. As you will see, their experiences don’t quite match the "impressive safety and efficacy" of which FIAPAC boast.

Live Action, the pro-life organisation founded by Lila Rose, details experiences on their website of mothers who have suffered abortions using RU486.

One experience is that of Abby Johnson, the famous former Planned Parenthood ‘clinic’ director, who underwent two abortions (one of which was a medical abortion), and wrote about her experience in her 2009 book, Unplanned:

"... I started to feel pain in my abdomen unlike anything I had ever experienced. Then the blood came. It was gushing out of me. I couldn’t wear a pad - nothing was able to absorb the amount of blood it was losing.

The only thing I could do was sit on the toilet. I sat there for hours…Bleeding, throwing up into the bathroom trashcan, crying and sweating.

I used to watch shows about childbirth. I would see these women in labor they would be covered in sweat. I would always think, "Gosh, do they keep it hot in the delivery room, or what?" But at that moment, sitting on the toilet, I knew it wasn’t from heat…It was from pain..."

Live Action wrote that when Abby phoned the Planned Parenthood clinic, they told her that her experience was "not abnormal". It is hard to see how this kind of experience can be described as anything but a nightmare and yet Professor Baulieu described the success of his discovery as a "very intimate success".

In further quotes taken from a Boston Phoenix article, a mother describes her abortion at 6 weeks, using RU486:

"Back at the dorm, hours later, I know that I writhed in my twin bed, suffering from debilitating, convulsing cramps. My roommates, best friend, and boyfriend hovered around; they brought me pain killers, Tiger Balm, hot-water bottles, and applesauce, and all the while they stroked my head and conferenced in the background about how I was doing. I bled profusely as my body rejected the fetus that had been described to me as "the size of a grain of rice." I threw up. And finally, I fell asleep."

Another account says,

"The next day the bleeding was still relentless and the pain only bearable because I was still breathing. I called the clinic, again, and they told me that the doctor said it was a "delayed abortion". There was still nothing they could do and it was normal. I lay all day bleeding, crying and thinking I must be crazy. As the day progressed it became increasingly hard for me to get up and walk to the bathroom. I began to pass out if I stood up. It finally got to the point that my boyfriend had to carry me to the bathroom, because I could no longer stand."

Many more can be read on Live Action’s website.

Readers may remember the case of Savita Halappanavar who died of sepsis during miscarriage in the Republic of Ireland. It was later claimed that she had asked for an abortion and had been denied this on the basis that Ireland is a Catholic country. What followed was an aggressive campaign by the pro-abortion lobby to legalise abortion in Ireland, on the back of Savita’s tragic death. So-called vigils were held for Savita and her name was used over and over again (usually in the phrase "never again") as a reason for the legalisation of abortion in this once pro-life country.

It was later found that it would have been very unlikely that Savita could have been saved by an abortion (a pre-viable induction, in this case), if at all. As the pro-life lobby repeats over and over again, abortion is not healthcare; abortion kills unborn children and hurts women.

Three years ago, another mother died, this time as a result of abortion. No vigils were held for her, there was no campaigning on her behalf by feminists calling for a change in the law and fair healthcare for women.

This mother, Jessie-Maye Barlow, died at the age of 19 after she decided to abort her baby, who was conceived a few months after the birth of her first child.

In November 2011, she was given medication to bring about an abortion at the BPAS ‘clinic’ in Richmond. The Daily Mail reports that, "After suffering bleeding and low mood, she attended an NHS walk-in centre in Ashford, Middlesex on December 8 where staff referred her straight to the West Middlesex Hospital"

At West Middlesex Hospital, they discovered that Jessie-Maye had "retained products of conception" (which is the code to say that parts of the baby were still in her womb). As a result, she had contracted the superbug, streptococcus B.

"Despite surgery and medication, her health continued to suffer over the following 10 days.

Then, on the evening of December 20 her family called an ambulance after she emerged from the shower complaining of severe chest pain.

She was rushed from her home in Staines, Surrey, to St Peter’s Hospital, in nearby Chertsey, where she died hours later."

In January 2011, SPUC’s General Secretary, Paul Tully, championed the campaign against BPAS’ attempts to allow ‘bedroom abortions’.

SPUC intervened in the case with which BPAS intended to legalise the practise of allowing women to take misoprostol, used in conjunction with the chemical abortion drug RU486, at home rather than in hospital.

One might be surprised that an abortion provider such as BPAS, which claims to care about women’s welfare, would put their lives at risk by encouraging them to undergo such an ordeal at home, rather than in one of their centres. However, the NHS funds 98% of abortions in England and Wales and of those, 64% take place in private ‘clinics’, like BPAS and Marie Stopes.

BPAS are making a great deal of money from abortion. In fact, an article which was published by the Daily Telegraph in 2011 revealed that abortions paid for by the NHS cost £30 million more than was previously thought (each abortion costing the NHS around £680 each).

SPUC hailed the defeat of the BPAS’ case as a victory for women. Evidence submitted by SPUC played a prominent part in the case judgment.

Regarding BPAS’ case in the High Court, Paul Tully said, "Abortion is an appalling ordeal for women, as well as the killing of an unborn child. In taking this legal action BPAS is trivialising abortion and jeopardising women’s welfare. We will seek to intervene in this case on behalf of unborn children, whose right to life has been protected from the time of Hippocrates in ancient Greece to the establishing of international human rights law in modern times. In contrast, the right to abortion - the killing of an unborn baby - does not exist in English law or any international human rights instrument."

How can the abortion industry claim that RU486 is effective, safe and easy to use? The evidence proves otherwise for many women. How many women would speak out were it not perhaps for fear of being dismissed or feelings of shame? My prediction is that in the years to come, and the years after the abolition of abortion, there will be hundreds of thousands of stories similar to those we have read, describing the horrors of abortion.