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Last Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made the landmark decision to approve RU-486--otherwise known as "mifepristone"--for use in the United States after almost twenty years of deliberation and testing in the midst of roiling controversy. First available in France in 1988, and now used widely across Europe and China, the pill provides an alternative to surgical abortion by chemically inducing miscarriage. Although RU-486 can currently be prescribed only at special clinics and designated hospitals, the drug will soon become available to practitioners across the country...
...railed that "do-it-yourself-abortion has no place in civilized society." Others stuck to simpler, more familiar catch-phrases, with Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) calling RU-486 "baby poison" and Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okh.) claiming that the FDA's decision was making available "a drug intended to kill people...
...across the aisle, where one would anticipate an equal and opposite reaction of elation, the FDA's decision has left many pro-choice advocates strangely unsatisfied. For although RU-486 has been completely cleared for public consumption, that clearance is tampered with a long list of restrictions that pro-choice supporters claim reduce its effectiveness for those who would wish to use it. These advocates assert that the stipulations that the FDA has placed upon the pill will serve to counter the majority of the pill's positive effects...
...only be administered by practitioners who ensure that a surgical abortion will be available on the rare occasion that the pill fails, thereby virtually limiting the number of doctors who can dispense the drug to the same number who already perform abortions. Moreover, physicians wishing to prescribe RU-486 must comply with a broad range of often archaic state laws regulating surgical abortions; laws whose stipulations are often difficult to apply to this radical new approach to the procedure...
...Angeles convention, but they were still effective, especially that of a Florida high school student whose classroom is too crowded to provide her a desk. Gore's control of specifics were again impressive, and his responses to questions regarding the Serbian election, oil reserves and energy policy, RU-486 and the Supreme Court were well-reasoned and articulate. He spoke naturally, especially on topics where his greater control of quantitative information gave him the advantage...