Anti-Choicers Beefing As Usual

It looks like anti-choice legislators are at it again, and this time they’re targeting Mifepristone, otherwise know as RU-486, that’s been proven to be a safe and effective form of abortion.
According to Ms. Magazine, Republican Congressman and Senator-elect Jim DeMint of South Carolina is trying to reintroduce a bill that suspends the sale of Mifepristone and authorizes the General Accounting Office (GAO) to investigate the process the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) used to approve the drug.
DeMint and his co-sponsors, Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) and Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) had taken the opportunity to start this shit up again after the FDA announced that Mifepristone’s label will be changed to recognize that there are certain risks associated with any abortion, and that doctors prescribing it should tell their patients to contact them if there’s any excessive bleeding or bacterial infection. Isn’t that what any prescribed drug is supposed to have?
The RU-486 Suspension and Review Act was originally introduced after the death of a California woman who had taken Mifepristone. Yet Dr. Steven Galson, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, stated he does not believe that mifepristone was related to the infection that cause the woman’s death.
“There is no scientific or safety reason to suspend sale of mifepristone,” said Dr. Beth Jordan, Medical Director of the Feminist Majority Foundation. “It’s curious that these same legislators are not trying to get the safety of penicillin, aspirin, various anti-histamines or especially Viagra reviewed and the product suspended given the astronomically higher associations with complications these drugs have over Mifepristone. Clearly, this is a politically motivated agenda.” No duh! (Sorry, I’ll take any opportunity to regress back to junior high slang.)
Mifepristone has been taken by around 360,000 women in the U.S. since its approval by the FDA in 2000. According to the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, mifepristone is actually safer than taking a pregnancy to full term.
That should tell us something, no?
Check out The Well Timed Period’s take on this, as well as some thoughts from Mouse Words.