Pennsylvania Regulates RU 486

By HENRY V. KING

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Thanks in large measure to pro-life Pennsylvanians who persevere in the battle against unrestricted abortion, use of the abortifacient RU 486, newly approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, will be carefully regulated in the Keystone State.

"Pennsylvania's Abortion Control Act applies to all abortion, whether surgical or drug-induced. The Act is clear," said state Secretary of Health Robert Zimmerman recently. By definition in Pennsylvania, abortion is "the use of any means to terminate the clinically disposable pregnancy of a woman. 11

With that, according to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the Gov. Tom Ridge administration dispatched measured guidelines to all Pennsylvania facilities and practitioners concerning RU 486, the controveisial abortion-inducing pill the FDA approved for use last September.

When the government's decision to approve RU 486 was announced, Philadelphia's Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua and New York's Archbishop Edward Egan

were among the first to denounce it strongly.

"Never has this nation had a stronger reason to fear for the loss of its basic decency and honor," 'Archbishop Egan declared. "For the first time in its history an office of the federal government, the Food and Drug Administration, has sanctioned a chemical not designed to cure or strengthen, but rather to kill."

To obtain an abortion in Pennsylvania, a woman must be in the first six months of pregnancy. Abortion practitioners must file a report with the state on every abortion performed, and they must also disclose all complications in their report. In addition, the woman must be counseled on alternatives to abortion, and then wait a "consideration period" of 24 hours. Further, minors must obtain the consent of at least one parent.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvanians for Human Life reported that abortionist Stephen Brigham, owner of a number of abortion clinics nationwide, lost his legal fight against eviction at State College, home of Penn State University, and must close his facility there.

Brigham is persisting in an attempt to open an abortion mill in Erie, where some 23,000 residents have signed petitions against it and demonstrations have been held at the proposed site.

Thanks to dedicated pro-life efforts in alerting fellow citizens, Brigham failed in two prior attempts to start an abortion clinic in Wilkes-Barre in the eastern part of the state.

On another front, the Wyoming Valley chapter of Pennsylvanians for Human Life is alerting citizens that, in connection with RU 486, Misprostal. or Cytotec, the second drug employed in the abortion-inducing procedure - used to induce labor - has had according to its manufacturer, Searle, "serious adverse events."

Searle, in fact, is not endorsing use of its product in conjunction with RU 486, and its medical director has sent a drug-warning letter to U.S. physicians. The adverse events include maternal death, uterine rupture or perforation requiring surgical repair, amniotic fluid embolism, and severe vaginal bleeding.