092900 Deadly'ABORTION PILL' GETS FDA APPROVAL
Friday,September 29,2000 By MARILYN RAUBER
WASHINGTON - The Food and Drug Administration delivered the
abortion pill RU-486 to American women yesterday - and spawned
a new abortion fight in the tight presidential race.
In about a month, the pill, which induces an early
miscarriage, will be available in doctors' offices - where
women will have to take the drug - for roughly the same price
as a surgical abortion.
"At long last, science trumps anti-abortion politics,"
Feminist Majority president Eleanor Smeal said of the FDA's
long-awaited approval, 12 years after RU486 first became
available in France and four years after the federal agency
declared it a safe drug.
Abortion foes claimed the pill - more accessible than abortion
clinics, which many women must travel far to get to, only to
be harassed by protesters - amounts to an "easy option" to
kill.
But both anti-abortion activists and pro-choicers warned the
shelf life of RU-486 could be decided in November - and both
sides are gearing up to air a flurry of TV ads.
The decision to market the pill here puts Vice President Al
Gore and GOP presidential rival George W. Bush at sharp odds,
as they meet for their first debate next Tuesday.
In the New York Senate race, in which both candidates are
pro-choice, Hillary Clinton backers are attacking Rick Lazio
for missing a July vote in which the House narrowly defeated,
187-182, a bid to stop the drug's approval.
Gore applauded the FDA action, claiming it was "not about
politics, but the health and safety of American women and a
woman's fundamental right to choose."
Bush, whose father banned importation of the pill in 1989 when
he was president, called the move plain "wrong."
Anti-abortionists boasted that Bush could, if he wins in
November, order the FDA to recall the drug.
Spokesman Ari Fleischer said Bush wouldn't directly interfere
with the FDA - but that if Congress passed an RU-486 ban, Bush
would sign it.
Abortion foes in Congress have come close to banning the drug.
The House narrowly passed FDA bans in 1997, 1998 and 1999,
although the language never made it into law.
The National Abortion Rights Action League said that with
abortion a legal right, any ban on the pill, especially now
that it's been approved, would be unconstitutional.
"They could try it and we'd fight it," NARAL legal director
Elizabeth Cavendish told The Post, but she conceded the GOP
"could hold it up for a very long time."
House activist Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) vowed yesterday to do
an end run, with legislation allowing only gynecologists to
prescribe the pill, and requiring the doctors to be
registered, which could make them targets for abortion
protests.
The FDA is so worried about anti-abortion violence it has
tightened security at some of its offices, and withheld the
names of its research doctors and the name of the foreign
manufacturer.
NARAL predicted one-third of abortion-seekers will opt for the
new pill in the United States, where about 1.3 million
abortions are performed every year.
The drug will be sold under the brand name Mifeprex by Danco
Laboratories, a private New York firm that was set up to
distribute and market the pill.
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