Prompts Renewed Call for Congressional Action on RU486: New Study Details Dangers of RU486.

Two doctors who have examined over 600 reports of "adverse events" among U.S. women who have taken RU486 say they have found not only a dangerous pattern of problems among patients but also considerable deficiencies in the reporting of those complications.

Obstetrician/gynecologists Margaret Gary and Donna Harrison spoke on Capitol Hill on February 1, 2006. They discussed their findings, reported in the February 2006 issue of The Annals of Pharmacotherapy, at a press conference in which several members of Congress expressed their support for a bill that would pull RU486 from the market and investigate how such a dangerous drug came to be approved.

Ten women are now known to have died after taking RU486, including five in the U.S. Four women in California and one in Canada died from rare bacterial infections following their chemical abortions, while one RU486 patient from Tennessee died after her undetected tubal pregnancy ruptured. A woman in France died from a heart attack, while a teen in Sweden bled to death and two British patients died for reasons unknown after taking the abortion pill. NRLC has a fact sheet you can download at http://www.nrlc.org/factsheets/FS15_pilldanger.pdf.

Congress Urged to Act

Dr. Gary's and Dr. Harrison's February 1, 2006, press conference on Capitol Hill was hosted by Representative Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), one of the sponsors of "Holly's Law," named for Holly Patterson. Holly, a California teenager, died in 2003 after taking the abortion pill.

The bill, H.R. 1079, would suspend government approval for RU486 and investigate exactly how the dangerous drug came to be approved during the Clinton Administration.

Congressman Bartlett told reporters that "RU486 always kills babies. Today, we present stronger evidence that RU486 kills and injures women.