The FDA recently caved to pressure from Planned Parenthood and revised its research-based recommendations for the use of the medical abortion regimen known as RU 486 or the abortion pill. In a previous blog entitled “F the FDA,” I described all the reasons this regimen is harmful to women. So why would Planned Parenthood intentionally choose a regimen that hurts women and why would the FDA approve it? The answer to Planned Parenthood’s decision to use this dangerous regimen and protocol is clear. Profit. I will blog soon about what PP does with its incredible amounts of profit (it had excess assets of 1.5 billion in June 2015.) Spoiler alert: None of it is used to increase safety for women.
When RU 486 was first approved in the US in 2000, Planned Parenthood flouted the initial FDA guidelines and chose a less expensive regimen and more convenient method of administration both causing more risk to women’s safety.
1) PP chose a lower dose of the more effective, more expensive drug in the two drug regimen and allowed women to take the second medicine at home rather than having it administered by a doctor at the clinic. Initially PP chose a vaginal route for its patient- administered step, but changed the route to buccal (dissolved in the cheek) when the vaginal route was suspected of causing several fatal infections.
2) PP also allowed use of RU 486 up to 9 weeks instead of the 7 weeks initially recommended by the FDA even though PP knew that the research showed a significant drop in effectiveness after the 7 week mark. One out of five of those patients fail to abort and must endure a follow-up surgical abortion. The unsuccessful medical abortion can manifest itself by severe hemorrhage or infection due to the retained fetus. This is very bad for women, but very good for PP’s bottom line. Planned Parenthood charges more than the cost of the medical and surgical abortion combined, $800 at one clinic, for the medical abortion (medicines cost $100). If a patient needs a surgical abortion to finish what the medical abortion started, there’s no extra fee, but PP has already guaranteed a profit even when both are needed. When the medical abortion works, PP makes a huge profit, or if the hemorrhaging, feverish patient goes to an emergency room instead of back to the PP clinic when the medical abortion fails, then PP pockets the profit in those cases as well.
3) PP has pressed and been successful in some states in allowing RU 486 to be administered by a non-physician, or by telephone, where a physician who has never met or examined the patient remotely unlocks a drawer to deliver the medicine to the patient.
The new 2016 FDA guidelines allow for the cheaper less effective regimen (which Planned Parenthood has been using since RU 486’s US approval in 2000) and for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. Why?
One reason is supposedly to align itself with “standard medical practice,” in other words, to what PP has been doing anyway. Most studies conducted on RU 486 since 2000, have been done by Planned Parenthood on itself. First PP studied its own disastrous vaginal route of administration compared to the buccal route to say both were equally effective and somehow managed to get positive headlines out of its fatal mistake. It then studied the efficacy of its regimen by lumping together all users, rather than separating out the 7-9 week pregnancies, and did not include 20% of patients who were lost to follow-up. This is horrible science! All 20% could have represented patients with failed abortions who required emergency treatment at hospitals,…or even died. And the overall 97% number it reported, already FALSE due to the lack of inclusion of 20% of patients, could still mean 1/5, or more, failed in the over 7 week group, but the average remained high. I say more because the FDA unbiased study prior to 2000 used the more effective drug regimen and still had 1/5 failures from 7-9 weeks.
A second reason for FDA changed guidelines is to increase “access” to medical abortions. When you hear the rhetoric of “increased access” you should always read it as” decreased safety,” “increased profit,” or both. Planned Parenthood will now be able to offer the more profitable medical abortion to patients up to 10 weeks, which will result in even more failures. But there is still profit built into the failures, and immense profit if an ER cleans up the mess or if the medical abortion is successful. PP is already making plans to flout, or at least intentionally misinterpret, the new FDA guidelines to increase profit further. According to the NY Times, “The label still requires a “follow-up with the health care provider,” but some abortion rights advocates said that could be interpreted as a lab test or something that did not require a visit to a doctor.” It seems to me that Planned Parenthood is fighting for a do-it-yourself abortion, for which PP is only responsible for collecting the money and performing any surgical redo’s.
A third reason for the FDA changes is political, to help Planned Parenthood, who politically supports its supporters. The one thing Planned Parenthood is good at protecting is its profit margin. While abortions have dropped in the US in recent years, PP’s market share has increased, so its overall number per year has remained steady. Also, lest you credit PP with any education or contraceptive success on the decreased abortion numbers, make note that it distributed (for money) 932,000 emergency contraceptive Plan B kits last year (in the second year that drug was available) to patients who thought they might be pregnant. The old FDA requirements were easy for PP to ignore until Texas, for example, decided to pass a law requiring clinics to follow the FDA protocol. According to one clinic quoted in the NY Times article, women choosing medical abortions dropped from 40% to 5%. That could hurt profits. Surgical abortions are not nearly as profitable. PP always pushes medical abortions. PP’s research buddy, the Guttmacher Institute whom they fund, suggests women prefer medical abortions, but less biased research disagrees. Medical abortions are a worse choice for women and with the new FDA guidelines they are more dangerous than ever.
The only thing safe about these changes is Planned Parenthood’s profit.
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