Word: pill
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...their bodies of unwanted fetuses. Among the dubious household remedies: swallowing narcotics made from hempseed, douching with the caustic disinfectant potassium permanganate, and even quaffing gin laced with iron filings. Such medieval measures are now giving way to a modern alternative: drugs that can induce abortion. Approved in pill form abroad, they appear to have what their noxious predecessors lacked: safety and efficacy. They are not, however, lacking in controversy...
China and France last month became the first nations to sanction the use of one such preparation, the French-made abortion pill called RU 486 (trade name Mifepristone). Antiabortionists in the U.S. and abroad lost no time protesting. The Washington-based National Right to Life Committee last week threatened to boycott products of any U.S. firm that attempts to market such pills. The group's ire was further raised when the New England Journal of Medicine last week gave high marks to another abortion drug, epostane, developed by Sterling Drug Inc. "These pills kill unborn babies," said committee spokesman Richard...
Studies of RU 486, which was first incorrectly dubbed the "morning-after pill" when it was discovered in 1982 by French researcher Etienne Beaulieu, . have found it to be effective 95% of the time when taken during the first five weeks of pregnancy in conjunction with a prostaglandin, a substance that causes the uterus to contract. According to last week's Journal, Dutch researchers found epostane to be 84% effective in women five to eight weeks pregnant. Suction abortions, the usual surgical method, have a 96%-98% success rate. While both drugs allow women to avoid the dangers of surgery...
...ways to limit the size of their families: 1) use the morally acceptable rhythm method, which was then so unreliable as to justify the sobriquet "Roman roulette"; or 2) follow their consciences rather than papal counsel and adopt such forbidden means of contraception as diaphragms, condoms or the Pill -- which millions...
...Catholic Church teaches that no outside agent, be it pill, diaphragm or condom, can be used to prevent conception, which is the "natural" end of sexual intercourse. But a couple may licitly refrain from conjugal relations during a woman's fertile period, which usually lasts ten to twelve days during each menstrual cycle. The improved way of precisely determining those days is known as the ovulation method, or Billings mucus method, which was introduced by and named for an Australian Catholic couple in the 1970s. Using it, a woman carefully monitors changes in her cervical mucus to determine when...