Two more RU-486 deaths
Steve Ertelt at LifeNews.com today spotted an innocuous letter to the editor in the New England Journal of Medicine dated September 30 from the Centers for Disease Control dropping huge news: Two more women have died from infections after taking the RU-486 abortion cocktail.
This brings the total number of known U.S. deaths to at least 10 in the 10 years since the FDA approved RU486 for abortions. I’ve added clarifying notes [in brackets] to the letter’s details of the deaths…
In 2008, a 29-year-old white Hispanic woman (gravida 3, para 1 [pregnant 3x, 1 live birth], with diabetes) died 6 days after she began to receive 200 mg of oral mifepristone [RU486, which kills the baby] and 800 ?g of vaginal misoprostol [Cytotec, which dilates the cervix to deliver the dead baby] at 5 weeks of gestation, without prophylactic antibiotics. Her symptoms included severe abdominal cramping, vomiting, and diarrhea on day 4. She was hospitalized on day 5…. Exploratory laparotomy revealed copious greenish-brown peritoneal fluid and necrotic [dead] uterine and adnexal tissue [ovaries/fallopian tubes]…. she died of sepsis with acute respiratory distress syndrome…. C. sordellii was confirmed….
In 2009, a 21-year-old previously healthy white woman (gravida 3, para 0 [pregnant 3x, no live births]) died 12 days after she began to receive 200 mg of oral mifepristone and 800 ?g of vaginal misoprostol at 7 weeks of gestation, without prophylactic antibiotics. On day 6, severe abdominal cramping, vomiting, and diarrhea developed. She was hospitalized the next day…. she died of sepsis with acute renal failure and disseminated intravascular coagulation. C. sordellii was cultured….
Many questions. Where did these deaths occur? Why did the CDC wait so long to alert the public, and why in such a nonpublic way? Did the FDA know of these deaths when recently approving the week-after pill Ella, with a nearly identical chemical composition?
The CDC letter included what I thought was a strange paragraph:
Planned Parenthood Federation of America health centers changed their recommended regimen for medical abortions in the years 2006 and 2007, administering buccal [under the tongue] rather than vaginal misoprostol and adding routine prophylactic antibiotics (doxycycline) in response to rare reports of serious infection after medical abortion. The effectiveness of this revised regimen in preventing C. sordellii infections and the safety of routine administration of antibiotics for this procedure remain unknown.
Why did the CDC feel it necessary to exonerate PP from the deaths? Is PP really exonerated? Is news to come that one or both deaths occurred at noncompliant PPs, and the CDC is merely setting the stage to absolve the parent company, pardon the pun?
More from LifeNews.com:
Wendy Wright… [of]… Concerned Women for America says the FDA is taking a curious approach to the abortion pill – informing the public of dangers of other products and drugs but ignoring the problems associated with mifepristone.
“Just this week the FDA released a dire warning to stop using infant sleep positioners because 12 infants died in 13 years. RU-486 has caused at least 9 deaths in less than 10 years,” she said. “According to the FDA’s standards, it needs to warn people not to use RU-486. No respectable doctor would use it.”
And from the Family Research Council:
Ten years ago, the FDA’s approval process for RU-486 was flawed, relying primarily on French data that the FDA admitted was marked by “carelessness,” “fraud,” and “evidence tampering.” And while the abortion industry achieved a major victory with the approval of RU-486, women have been the victims of the abortion agenda.
Other drugs with less extreme adverse affects have been pulled from the market quickly, but not RU-486, whose over 1,300 adverse affects on women using the drug – including 336 hospitalizations, 172 blood transfusions, and most gravely, 12 deaths – have been ignored. These two women are just the latest of many to pay a severe price.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
A few weeks ago we were talking about telemed abortions. This should be exhibit “A” on why telemed abortions are an especially bad idea. I presume these women were administered the drug by the normal procedures, and yet they died. It stands to reason that even more deaths will result when there is even less follow-up by a physician.
Nick-
Twelve dead women in ten years doesn’t seem like a lot, unless one of those women was your wife or your daughter.
If any other drug, for any other purpose, had caused 12 deaths, and serious complications for hundreds of other women, it would have been taken off the market by now.
We’re pro-life for women as much as babies- it seems clear that you don’t care for either.
Nick:
It seems to me that Michelle has a point: What IF it was someone close to you, a daughter or wife.
It kind of reminds me of people who are gung ho about having our youth going off to fight wars everywhere–that is until it is one of their own. Suddenly those wars have a different meaning.
Michelle doesn’t need a course in epidemiology. Michelle has a heart and doesn’t need scientists telling her to treat a few deaths here and there as so much collateral damage.
“an RU486 abortion prevents a childbirth.”
Yup, it prevents childbirth because the child that should be birthed is killed instead thanks to mindsets like yours.
Abortion kills many more females than anything you’ve listed. There is no evil intent behind most car accidents, childbirth deaths and dying in your sleep for that matter. However, there is the evil intent to kill human life during an abortion.
We all know already Nick you support the killing of children and you show no concern for the women who die in the process. Do you ever wonder what is behind your hatred of women and children?
@Nick, remember an RU-486 abortion kills a BABY. EVERY TIME.
You need to take a basic biology course. :(
Nick:
Your mistake is treating pregnancy as a disease. Comparing aspirin and car crashes and whatever to RU-486 is disingenuous.
Car crashes can be prevented by safe driving and courtesy and drivers being alert and paying attention.
When taking RU-486 abortions aren’t prevented…thus a death of a pre-born baby occcurs. RU-486 can cause a woman’s death–that’s 2 deaths right there. Or it can cause other problems.
Low dose asprin has the ability to help prevent a heart attack–or help in the instance of a heart attack. RU-486 can’t make that claim.
RU-486 doesn’t have anything to prevent the death of a pre-born baby since that’s what it’s engineered to do. It’s engineered to abor the baby–abort means to end (in simplistic terms). How can you end the pregnancy if you don’t end the baby’s life? If said being wasn’t a baby, then the woman wouldn’t be pregnant.
Nick,
When teenager Becky Bell was alleged to have died of an “illegal abortion”, the hue and cry over this one death was deafening, even though if was eventually discovered that no medical evidence existed to prove any abortion, illegal or otherwise. Rather Becky had had a miscarriage and died of an unrelated pneuomonia. Who cared about facts? More important that this one death be presented as ”proof” of the “danger” of parental consent laws. Abortion advocates wouldn’t let this slip though their hands without getting all the political mileage they could from it.
Your reaction is so typical of abortion advocates. Women dying of legal abortion well, isn’t so bad. Put simply, if there’s no political benefit to be gained from a woman’s abortion related death, she’s just a minor statistic.
“TEN patient deaths in ten years? That’s an extremely small number. At that rate, getting an RU486 abortion in USA is safer than driving to work. A lot safer.”
No, it isn’t.
Consider the incidence rate.
10 deaths per x administrations.
vs. vehicle fatalities
deaths per x trips.
There are about 100 vehicular deaths per day and probably at least 100 million person-trips per day if not twice that.
So that is about 1 vehicular death per million trips.
RU 486 is about 1 death per 200,000.
So driving to work is about five times as safe.
Wow, coathangers in pill form. Before Roe vs Wade unsupervised, lonely abortions with women bleeding in back alleys. After Roe vs Wade, RU-486: women lonely, having unsupervised abortions over a toliet. Now that’s what I call progress for women! NOT!!
Actually, only around 10 if you’re only counting the US. According to other articles I’ve been reading, these two new deaths bring the international total to 15.
Even with as few deaths as there might be, there have been MANY more injuries. If you read Jill’s article above, she states her findings from the Family Research Council: “Other drugs with less extreme adverse affects have been pulled from the market quickly, but not RU-486, whose over 1,300 adverse affects on women using the drug – including 336 hospitalizations, 172 blood transfusions, and most gravely, 12 deaths – have been ignored.”
Also, just think of this: There’s no way of knowing how many went unreported, or were thought to be unconnected.
According to an article on RU-486 from Physicians For Life:
“A more recent study from Finland indicates that when using the abortion pill, 20% of women suffered at least one significant side effect.
“Of those studied, hemorrhaging occurred in 15.6% of cases, infection in 1.7%, and incomplete abortions in 6.7%.
“Compared to surgical abortion, the risk of hemorrhage was almost eight times higher and the risk of an incomplete abortion was five times higher.
“Other research suggests that the drug suppresses the immune system, leaving the woman more susceptible to infection.”
You can find the article, complete with footnotes giving sources for their information, here: http://www.physiciansforlife.org/content/view/1939/26/
With RU-486 being as harmful as it is, I don’t know why anyone would want to take such a drug.
And Leslie, I totally agree with you! The pro-aborts are compromising what they argue against by touting this drug. It’s completely hypocritical of them. Legal and safe? I think not.
It’s still safer than childbirth Amy. But I do agree it needs more development to make it safer and dispensed only in suitable circumstances.
RU 486 is expensive for the patient and it takes longer and is less safe. Generally drugs that are not as safe or effective as existing methods are not approved. However, RU 486 is highly profitable at every stage from manufacture to distribution to dispensing. It is purely profit driven.
“It’s still safer than childbirth”
Probably not. RU 486 is only dispensed to the healthiest patients because it is too dangerous for women with any significant health conditions. So the death rate is fairly high given the select population taking the drug.
Maternal death statistics include deaths from abortion. Any time a woman dies while pregnant, it is included in maternal deaths. Many of these women have significant health problems. So, the comparison is inaccurate. They don’t disaggregate full term deaths from those at other stages. So, we really don’t know.
“Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in a New York Times interview published today but flagged last week. In it, Ginsburg talks about Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalised abortion:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100002972/what-the-hell-did-ruth-bader-ginsburg-mean-when-she-linked-abortion-and-eugenics/
Not ‘probably not’ at all hippie. See what you make of this:
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00054602.htm
What’s your point in relation to Justice Ginsberg?
If one reads the small print at the bottom of the letter in the NEJM, the situation becomes clearer:
“C. sordellii toxic shock syndrome may occur in reproductive-age women <b>regardless of pregnancy status</b>.”
Furthermore, there is evidence that C. Sordelli Toxic Shock Syndrome is widely underdiagnosed:
“The incidence of CSTS is unknown; one review of death certificates suggested that CSTS was the cause of 1 in 200 deaths among young women of childbearing age”
Take a look at the abstract of this post-mortem study where 4 of 5 deaths of 38 women were NOT undergoing abortion:
“Thirty-eight women were suspected of having C sordellii-associated death. Five tested positive for Clostridium species: 3 for Clostridium perfringens, 1 for C sordellii, and 1 for both. Deaths occurred after the medical procedures for cervical dysplasia (n = 2), surgical abortion (n = 1), stillborn delivery (n = 1), and term live birth (n = 1). None had a medical abortion.”
http://www.uptodate.com/patients/content/abstract.do?topicKey=~QkKkMfAi1rLfl.&refNum=6
Not delivering the full account on this story, in Science, would be condemned in the Scientific Community.
For everyone else–in particular those that wish to scare readers for political advantage, it’s BEARING FALSE WITNESS.