Drug’S Approval Heightens Debate
More women will have access to abortions in the privacy of their doctor’s office with the FDA’s approval of the RU-486 pill, Spokane abortion-rights advocates say.
“It gives women more choices,” Dr. Elizabeth Bianchi, medical director of Planned Parenthood of the Inland Northwest, said Thursday. “It’s a shame this didn’t happen 10 years ago.”
Women will be able to receive the treatment from their primary care physician or their gynecologist, rather than run the gantlet of protesters sometimes camped outside of clinics such as Planned Parenthood. And RU-486 is safer than a surgical abortion, supporters say.
Planned Parenthood will begin using RU-486 as soon as it’s available - in about a month - said John Nugent, chief executive officer of the local Planned Parenthood branch. The organization hopes that the availability of RU-486 will mean more physicians throughout the community will perform the procedure.
U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is calling the FDA’s decision a great victory for women’s health.
“This announcement puts family planning decisions right where they belong - in the hands of women and their doctors,” Murray said. “Reproductive health care decisions should not be decided on the Senate floor, they should be decided in the examining room.”
Abortion foes see RU-486 as a disingenuous way for the medical community to distance itself from the distasteful business of abortion.
“It’s a so-called panacea to the trauma of abortion,” the Rev. John Steiner, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Spokane, said. “It kind of keeps the doctors’ hands out of the blood of the death of the unborn child. `We want to make it nice.”’
Still, “it’s death for cash.” And it demonstrates how women become victims of a society that “doesn’t support women and children the way it should,” Steiner said.
Jim Anderson, director of Lifeline Ministries, agrees. “It’s part of the cultural sexual assault on women,” he said.
It also sets a bad example for children, he said. “This is the solution we are offering and then we’re surprised when Columbine happens?” Anderson said, referring to the Littleton, Colo., high school student massacre. “We act flabbergasted when they act consistent with the ethics we give them.”
Local health insurance carriers are giving mixed signals as to how they will deal with the pill.
The region’s largest provider, MSC/Premera Blue Cross, covers “all FDA approved prescription medication at some level, unless they are specifically excluded by the benefits contract,” said spokeswoman Clara Webb Kinner. Therefore, people with policies with the appropriate prescription drug benefit will have RU-486 covered.
Group Health Cooperative will consider whether to cover RU-486 through the normal review process given any drug, said Jim Carlson, assistant director of pharmacy administration for Group Health. Group Health scrutinizes all data and literature associated with any drug to assess safety and effectiveness.
The soonest Group Health would decide on RU-486 is mid-November.