Contragestion: pharmacological abortion, called ‘medical’ abortion
“RU486 or mifepristone, for sale under the name of myfegine (UK) or myfeprex (US), attaches itself to progesterone receptor sites once the embryo is implanted in the uterus, progesterone being the hormone necessary for maintaining and developing a pregnancy. Mifepristone thus prevents progesterone from occupying its place on the receptor, thereby creating an anti-progesterone effect. It provokes the abortion of an implanted embryo by preventing the corpus luteum from producing progesterone and damaging the uterine mucus in such a way as to lead to the detachment and expulsion of the embryo. Administered alone, mifepristone provokes an abortion in only 85% of cases. Combined with a prostaglandin, Misoprostol oral (‘Cytotec’), its abortifacient efficiency reaches 95%, as long as it is administered on the first days of pregnancy. This is what ‘medical abortion’ refers to, as opposed to the usual ‘surgical abortion’ (usually carried out by aspiration), but this expression leads to confusion, as abortions that are induced for a medical reason (mother’s health, for instance) are also called ‘medical abortions’. Mifepristone has no effect after the 49th day of pregnancy (when the placenta takes over from the corpus luteum in secreting progesterone)”.
“RU 486 has many unpleasant side effects:
- Nausea, vomiting;
- Intense abdominal pain;
- Blood loss, possibly in important quantities;
- Interference with the hypothalamo-pituitary system;
- Unpleasant feeling when the dead embryo goes through the cervix”.
“In fact, the risks incurred by using RU 486 are greater than those of recurring to a surgical abortion, and this has been denounced even in feminist ranks. In the US, the death rate (most often by hemorrhage) of mifepristone would be 1.39 per 100,000, i.e. 14 times higher than the death rate after surgical abortion (by suction-aspiration). Were it not because of the ideological pressure and the perspective of extraordinary profits opened by international birth control programs in the third world, a drug presenting such high risks for its users would never have made it beyond the stage of animal testing. RU 486 owes its initial acceptance in the three countries that adopted it from the beginning (England, Switzerland and France) only to the passivity of the feminist movements, to the media taboo that defines anything in favor of abortion as intrinsically good and necessary, and to the excellence of health care centers that made it possible, through an intense surveillance of patients, to obviate the product’s harmful effects”.
“From an ethical standpoint, the ‘contragestion’ achieved by mifepristone falls under the same absolute condemnation as a voluntary abortion carried out surgically. The introduction of mifepristone in the contraception-abortion market has had very serious ethical consequences, as it further blurred the line between contraception and abortion and contributed to further trivialize abortion. Moreover, mifepristone further privatizes abortion, while we are here dealing with a decision that is often taken at a moment of serious distress, when the person needs to be assisted and listened to. She who uses mifepristone to put an end to an incipient pregnancy finds herself even more alone in the execution of her project, with all the consequences this will bear for her future existence in terms of guilt and psychic wounds”.