Imagine selling illegal drugs that trigger an illegal, abnormal, potentially life-threatening bodily function with a 10+% failure rate requiring unguaranteed surgical intervention.

I sounded the alarm 3 weeks ago when reading that Women on Waves sells the RU-486 abortion cocktail (mifeprostone with a misoprostol chaser) over the Internet in countries where abortion is illegal.

Now, according to several sources today including Sky News:

Women living in countries where abortion is restricted... are using the internet to buy abortion pills that allow them to have a termination at home.

More than one in 10 customers on one of the most well-known websites needed a surgical procedure after taking the medication, a medical study has found....

Women in more than 70 countries... have used the internet site Women on Web to buy the drugs for £55 ($110) a time.

Women on Web is available in 5 languages and offers the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol; it says a combination of the pills causes the non-surgical termination of a pregnancy and can be used up to the 9th week.

The website says it helps women "gain access to a safe abortion with pills in order to reduce the number of deaths due to unsafe abortions".

But a study in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology found that 11% of 400 customers went on to need a surgical procedure - either because the drugs had not completed the abortion or because of excessive bleeding.

Added monstersandcritics.com:

However, anti-abortion campaigners said women often understated the period of gestation in order to obtain the medication.

'This is very worrying indeed. It's like a cynical form of back-street abortion,' said Josephine Quintavalle, of anti-abortion campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics.

Of course, on both points.

Where are the politicians like both Clintons who spout the "safe, legal, and rare" mantra? These certainly violate 2 of the 3. Where are the feminists so concerned for women's health?

I'll answer my own question. These politicians won't say a word because they're getting money from the racket making scads of money off this Internet scheme, the feminists. Btw, it seems obvious that Women on Waves and Women on Web are one and the same.

The New York Times reports today on its front page that the sole manufacturer of RU-486, a Chinese state-owned drug company named Shanghai Hualian, "is at the center of a nationwide drug scandal" involving contaminated leukemia drugs that caused paralysis in 200+ Chinese patients and an attempted cover-up afterward....

Since its approval in 2000, the FDA has until now never publicly identified the Chinese maker of RU-486, which was first developed in France.

RU-486's US distributor is Danco Laboratories. Get this. According to the NYT, "Danco, which does not list a street address on its Web site, did not return two telephone calls seeking comment." Sounds real legit.

One major US drug company, Pfizer, has refused to do business with Shanghai Hualian, due to poor quality. But not so for abortion drug distributor Danco. Par.

More to follow.

UPDATE, 2:25p: The NYT reports the Chinese FDA has stripped Shanghai Hualian's license to produce cancer drugs but not to produce RU-486. Meanwhile, two company officials have been detained by authorities.

Not to worry, says a Chinese FDA official. Shanghai Hualian's RU-486 plant is an hour's drive from its cancer drug plant, which agents have closed.

This is the same Chinese FDA whose top official was executed last year for taking bribes to approve substandard drugs, one of which killed at least 10 people, according to NewsInferno.com.

And don't forget, the Chinese government owns both its FDA and the drug manufacturer.

UPDATE, 3p: This is all our fault, even though there's no problem, according to Brilliant at Breakfast. It only took a few hours. 'Wish I'd timed it.

But, if you read the article, it's actually about lax import standards, lax FDA oversight, and how the fetophile movement's influence in government has created an environment in which importation of RU-486 was the only way to get it here.

By running a story with an inflamatory and inaccurate headline, the Times has allowed the RU-486 aspect of the story to overshadow the larger picture, which is that as the pharmaceutical industry outsources more of its manufacturing overseas, and Republican-dominated government insists that any regulation of industry is a bad thing, what we end up with is tainted drugs.

Indeed the larger picture for pro-aborts is that headline, according to other blogs I scanned.

Too bad RU-486 isn't a pet medication. Then they'd be riled.

[HT: Joe Morris]

This is a follow up to my November 29 post on Manishkumar Patel, accused of slipping his mistress RU-486 on 2 occasions, once in a smoothie, to cause her to abort twice.

Patel has apparently jumped bond in WI and fled to India, leaving friends and family who posted his $750,000 bail high and dry. A Sify story states his formerly pregnant girlfriend has claimed part of the money. Get this, his wife supposedly took off with him.

What losers, all.

[HT: moderator MK; photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]

This guy faces life in prison for slipping his girlfriend RU-486 in a smoothie and causing her to abort (not "miscarry") twice, when if she had wanted to take the pill to abort she would have been federally protected. He also gave her the drug, which is not to be prescribed after 49 days, at 15 weeks. From Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A 34-year-old Kaukauna man who owns several hotels and gas stations in the Fox Valley and northeastern Wisconsin is accused of giving his girlfriend the abortion pill RU-486 because he didn't want children.

The 39-year-old Kaukauna woman couldn't understand why she suddenly miscarried twice especially after her regular medical check-ups showed her pregnancies were going well....

When he learned his girlfriend was pregnant, he moved in with her under the guise of taking care of her and made her meals and tea, said Outagamie County Sheriff's Sgt. Gary Shortess.

"That was the only time he seemed interested in her, when he thought she was pregnant," said Shortess....

Shortess and sheriff's Sgt. Ryan Carpenter described Patel as manipulative and controlling of the woman who bought the home Patel was living in with his wife and was paying the mortgage. The 39-year-old woman, who is a family physician, also purchased vehicles for Patel.

RU-486 tablets were found at Patel's home when authorities conducted a search. Carpenter said officials believe Patel obtained them outside the United States....

The pregnancies were 15 weeks along in the first miscarriage and 5 to 7 weeks along in the second miscarriage....

When Patel purchased a smoothie at a local ice cream store in mid September the woman sat in the car while he went inside to buy the drink, the detectives said. He split the drink in two and after pouring part of the smoothie into another cup, the woman told detectives she saw him thoroughly mix it before giving it to her. Because of her suspicions, the woman kept the smoothie which was later tested and found to contain the crushed up abortion pill.

From the Associated Press:

Authorities have arrested a married man they say caused a woman to miscarry twice by slipping her an abortion drug.... Manishkumar M. Patel, 34, of Appleton....

The 39-year-old woman already had a 3-year-old child with Patel, who was married to someone else.... She became pregnant two more times but miscarried in December and September....

Apparently suspecting she had been slipped mifespristone, the abortion pill also known as RU-486, the woman had a blood sample sent to a California lab for analysis.... When it tested positive for the drug, she approached the sheriff's department....

Sheriff's officials said charges against Patel could include attempted first-degree intentional homicide of an unborn child, burglary, stalking and violating a restraining order....

Sheriff's investigators said Patel admitted putting the drug in something the woman consumed without her knowledge....

Wisconsin is one of 37 states with a fetal homicide law.... Under the 1998 law, anyone who attacks a pregnant woman and injures or kills her fetus could face life in prison.

At least six people have been charged with a crime under the law since 1998....

Yet another way abortion exploits women.

As reported by Family Research Council today:

On Wednesday the New England Journal of Medicine published a study examining the effect of the abortifacient, RU-486, on women's chances of later having tubal (ectopic) pregnancies or miscarriages....

The results were released to Time, the Associated Press, and Reuters, which splashed grossly misleading headlines like: "Study Finds Abortion Pill Safe" (Time).

Actually, the researchers concluded only that there was the same risk to women and child of future miscarriages if they had used RU-486 or had a surgical abortion.

Stopping on that point, as Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, quipped, "This study is like comparing whether it is worse to burn your hand on a gas stove or an electric stove. You still end up burned." Continuing on:

The new study is problematic because it did not examine other, short-term risks, and it did not compare RU-486 and surgical abortion patients to women with no abortion history.

Thus, this study says nothing about future pregnancy outcomes for RU-486 patients versus women who never have abortions - a true measure of longer-term RU-486 safety.

The authors, including an NIH scientist, laid down the following unbelievable spin to explain the omission: "....women who have never had an abortion tend to have a different pattern of income, smoking rates and other health-related behaviors that would make a comparison difficult...."

Riiiiiight. More likely - but not politically correct - is that women who have abortions have a higher risk of future negative pregnancy outcomes. HHS Secretary Leavitt needs to look into having this study re-done using proper methodology and unbiased scientists.

The authors basically said women who don't abort are higher class, as they say, "don't drink, don't smoke, don't chew, and don't run with boys who do." Don't sleep around either.

Are abortion supporters going to take characterization that lying down?

When I testified before an FDA committee opposing making the morning-after pill available without a prescription, I referred to a Bangkok Post story that revealed men were slipping it to girlfriends and wives without knowing.

Here's another example, based on a true story (addendum, 5:10p: about a guy slipping his girlfriend the abortion drug RU-486). According to e-urban legend, an ASU student made this short film, and her professor censored it. The background song, "Mad World," is from the "Donnie Darko" soundtrack.

[Hat tip: Bettnet.com via Andrew]

Last week, the US Senate unanimously approved SC Republican Jim DeMint's amendment to the FDA reauthorization bill stating the agency must have risk assessment and solution strategies in place with the manufacturer of RU-486 within seven months after the bill takes effect.

Pro-aborts in the Democrat-controlled body must have finally conducted a self risk assessment and determined they were close to being labeled as anti-women's health and safety if they didn't do something about RU-486....

Only last month, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee rejected Sen. Tom Coburn's amendment mostly on party lines, 12-8, to suspend sales of RU-486 altogether. This is very serious.

The abortion industry, mindless of women's health if it interferes with abortion, bulldozed FDA approval of RU-486 during the waning Clinton days in 2000 via an acceleration process supposed to be reserved for "life-threatening illnesses."

RU-486 is interesting in that it doesn't protect against life-threatening illnesses, it causes lives to end, and apparently not just preborn children. Perhaps the FDA became confused.

Since its rush approval, RU-486 has been linked to the deaths of at least seven American women, most due to toxic shock syndrome from the deadly bactium Clostridium sordellii, which may be an emerging risk of using RU-486.

The much publicized death of 18-year-old Holly Patterson in 2003 from RU-486 should have moved the FDA to pull RU-486 off the market, but it did not. It merely added a list of risks to RU-486's label.

The FDA has now received reports of 1,050 additional women who experienced adverse events from the RU-486 regimen including 9 life-threatening incidents, 232 hospitalizations, 116 blood transfusions, and 88 cases of infection, according to DeMint.