Abortion Pill Used in 25% of Early Abortions:
New Study Shows its Safety

Thursday July 9, 2009

A study reported in today's New England Journal of Medicine reveals that a new way of giving abortion pills to induce a medical abortion virtually eliminated the risk for a rare but dangerous infection. A medical abortion typically consists of the use of two medications: RU486 (mifepristone), which causes a fertilized egg to not remain attached to the lining of the uterus, and misoprostol, which causes uterine contractions. Originally, part of this procedure involved inserting the misoprostol pill into the vagina where the medicine was absorbed. But by the end of 2005, 4 American women and 1 Canadian had died of a rare bacterial infection afterward.

This new research, done at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country, had woman put the misoprostol pill in their mouth and let it dissolve. Medical abortions following this procedure reduced the risk of the serious infection from barely 1 in 1,000 cases to 0.06 in 1,000.

This study is important as it is the first to empirically document how safe and effective medical abortion is. The results of this study are leading many experts to predict that the percentage of medical abortions (which offer more privacy than surgical abortions) will rise even more given the improved safety of this method.

Given that 87% of U.S. counties do not have an abortion provider, hopefully the findings from this study may encourage some primary care doctors to offer medical abortions.

Current guidelines, put out by the National Abortion Federation, allow putting misoprostol in the cheek to dissolve, swallowing it, or inserting it in the vagina (which more than a third of clinics do). However, the National Abortion Federation – which represents 400 centers that provide half of the abortions in the US and Canada – will review the findings of this study in October to decide whether or not to make changes to its current guidelines.

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