“RU-4Life is the perfect response to the attempted introduction of RU-486 into the Canadian health care system,” said Campaign Life Ottawa lobbyist Johanne Brownrigg. “It’s a provocative rhetorical question” that plays on the drug’s name and “will be used to draw attention to the terrible side effects of the drug.”
Campaign Life said it is aiming “at keeping RU-486 out of Canada indefinitely.”
“On May 8, Prime Minister (Stephen) Harper will have to respond to the tens of thousands of Canadians who not only oppose the lawlessness on abortion in this country, but who also don’t want this human pesticide that kills babies and their mothers to be available in Canada,” said Campaign Life president Jim Hughes in a news release. “RU-486 is a lethal drug that has been shown to produce severe bleeding in 10 per cent of the women who take it. The fact that Health Canada has not yet rejected the application is appalling.”
“Those who attend the National March for Life desire a law that protects all human beings from the time of conception (fertilization) to natural death,” said Campaign Life national organizer Mary Ellen Douglas.
“Whether the abortion is surgical or chemical, the end result is the same, a dead human being. A federal election approaches and pro-life voters will be intently watching how the Harper government handles this file.”
Brownrigg is concerned the drug is being used on a trial basis in remote locations where aboriginal and Inuit women live.
“This means the most vulnerable of women, if they have adverse effects, will be least likely to be helped by the medical profession,” she said, noting the drug, which kills a developing baby at five to nine weeks of gestation, is being pushed for areas where abortion access is limited.
“Ironically, the pro-abortion movement railed against the supposed back alley abortions and now it’s come full circle to this kind of solution,” Brownrigg said.
RU-486, also known as mifepristone, was approved in the United States in 2000 and has been in use in some European countries since the late 1990s.
A 2011 U.S. Food and Drug Administration report indicated 14 women died in the United States as a result of the drug and more than 2,200 reported adverse effects, said Brownrigg, with 612 requiring hospitalization, 340 requiring blood transfusions and 256 developing infections.
Brownrigg points to the costs to the woman in the pursuit of terminating a pregnancy.
“She pays with her health, both physical and psychological, and can even pay with her life.”
A 2006 European study by researcher Regine Sitruk-Ware found of 1.5 million women taking mifepristone, 150,000 “experienced severe bleeding,” 21,000 required curettage to remove parts of the baby or placenta that were not expelled and almost 4,000 needed blood transfusions, Brownrigg said.
“This represents a 10-per-cent complication rate for severe bleeding,” she said. The drug also “leaves psychological damage when you are alone at home cramping up and deliberately killing your baby.”
“Campaign Life is so right to focus on this new development in Canada,” said Catholic Organization for Life and Family director Michele Boulva. “The RU-486 abortion pill once again being under review by Health Canada is incredible considering the number of women who have died and suffered using it, not to mention all the aborted children.”
Boulva recalled the testimony of former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson, who described her experience with the drug, according to a June 2012 report from the Zenit News Agency.
“I started to feel pain in my abdomen unlike anything I had ever experienced. Then the blood came. It was gushing out of me… I sat there for hours… bleeding, throwing up into the bathroom trash can, crying and sweating,” said Johnson, now a pro-life activist.
Campaign Life has started a petition to Health Minister Rona Ambrose demanding that the RU-486 application be “definitively rejected.” The petition can be accessed at www.campaignlifecoalition.com.