Tag Archives: RU-486

New study: complication rate for chemical abortions is 5.2%

Story from Life News.

Excerpt:

The UCSF study, “Incidence of Emergency Department Visits and Complications After Abortion,” is based on a recent study of California Medicaid recipients. It appeared in the December 8, 2014, edition of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.

California is one of the states that pays for the abortions of women enrolled in Medicaid. The study looked at the billing data from 50,273 Medi-Cal patients who had 54,911 abortions in 2009-2010.

[…]Nearly 8% (or between one in 12 and one in 13) of women showed up at the clinic or a local Emergency Room (ER) seeking some service within six weeks of their abortions. Some of those were eliminated from further study because billing records appeared to show that they came in for some service unrelated to the abortion. (These were not specified, but this could be something like smashing a finger in the car door, coming down with the flu, etc.)

But even pulling these out and other “complications not validated,” one is left with a substantial number of women dealing with medical problems resulting from their “safe” abortions.

On the billing records of those women returning to the clinic or going to the ER, they found women hemorrhaging, dealing with infections, uterine perforations – the sort of problems we’re supposed to think were relics of the early days following the Roe v. Wade decision when abortionists were just learning their craft.

A surprising number of these were related to the new chemical or “medication” abortion method that was supposed to offer women a safer alternative to surgical abortion.

There were nearly four times as many surgical abortions (34,755 first trimester, 8,837 2nd trimester or later) tracked by the study as there were chemical abortions. (11,319). Yet there were more identified complications associated with the chemical method (588) than they were for the surgical ones (438 for first trimester, 130 for 2nd or later) combined.

The complication rate for chemical abortions was 5.2%, versus complication rates of 1.3% for first trimester suction aspiration abortions and 1.5% for second trimester or later methods. This would make chemical abortions four times riskier than early surgical ones and more than three times less safe than a second or third trimester procedure.

This is hardly the “advance” or “improvement” that women were promised when the government was asked to approve RU-486 more than a decade ago.

I didn’t really want to take Life News’ word for this, so I looked up the study.

They’re right:

RESULTS: A total of 54,911 abortions among 50,273 fee-for-service Medi-Cal beneficiaries were identified. Among all abortions, 1 of 16 (6.4%, n=3,531) was followed by an ED visit within 6 weeks but only 1 of 115 (0.87%, n=478) resulted in an ED visit for an abortion-related complication. Approximately 1 of 5,491 (0.03%, n=15) involved ambulance transfers to EDs on the day of the abortion. The major complication rate was 0.23% (n=126, 1/436): 0.31% (n=35) for medication abortion, 0.16% (n=57) for first-trimester aspiration abortion, and 0.41% (n=34) for second-trimester or later procedures. The total abortion-related complication rate including all sources of care including EDs and the original abortion facility was 2.1% (n=1,156): 5.2% (n=588) for medication abortion, 1.3% (n=438) for first-trimester aspiration abortion, and 1.5% (n=130) for second-trimester or later procedures.

In other posts, I talked about the other risks associated with abortion.

Hobby Lobby granted temporary injunction from Obamacare abortion mandate

The Daily Caller reports.

Excerpt:

A federal appeals court granted The Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. a preliminary injunction against the Obamacare contraception mandate, Friday.

The ruling prevents the government from enforcing the mandate against the Christian craft company, which has resisted the healthcare law’s requirement that companies provide employees health care plans that cover contraception on religious grounds.

In a decision read from the bench the court ruled, “There is a substantial public interest in ensuring that no individual or corporation has their legs cut out from under them while these difficult issues are resolved.”

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is representing Hobby Lobby, considers the ruling to be a major victory.

“We were extremely pleased that the court granted [the preliminary injunction],” Adele Keim, a an attorney with the Becket Fund on the Hobby Lobby’s case said in an interview with TheDC. She explained that the Justice Department has until September 25 to decide whether to appeal the ruling.

“The tide has turned against the HHS mandate,” Kyle Duncan, general counsel with the Becket Fund and lead attorney for Hobby Lobby, said in a statement.

If the government were to enforce the mandate against the Hobby Lobby, failure to provide contraception in their plans would cost the company $1.3 million a day in fines, according to the Becket Fund.

There are currently 63 lawsuits challenging the contraception mandate, according to the Becket Fund.

The Weekly Standard had an article about the Obamacare abortion mandate a while back.

Excerpt:

As of August 1st of next year, the morning-after pills that must be provided free of charge, from coast to coast, will include Plan B and ella. Both drugs arguably act, in part, as abortifacients — by keeping a fertilized egg (or a newly conceived being) from implanting in the uterine wall. (“Pregnancy” is no longer medically defined as commencing with conception, but days later, at implantation.) None other than Planned Parenthood — a favorite of President Obama — admits that taking a morning-after pill not only helps prevent ovulation but also “thins the lining of the uterus,” adding, “In theory, this could prevent pregnancy by keeping a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus.”

[…]CBS News notes ella’s “chemical similarity” to RU-486 (which will not be “free” under Obamacare). The New York Times describes it as being RU-486’s “chemical relative.” The Washington Post describes it as being RU-486’s “close chemical relative.” WebMD says that it works to prevent the implantation of a fertilized egg — in other words, as an abortifacient.  Dr. Justo Aznar writes that between 50 percent and 70 percent of the time, ella “will act by an abortive mechanism.” The European Medicine Agency acknowledges that the drug has the “ability to delay maturation of the endometrium likely resulting in prevention of implantation.”

Far from denying that ella can prevent implantation of the fertilized egg in the womb, the FDA observes that it could potentially cause an abortion even later.  It notes that there “are no adequate and well controlled studies in pregnant women” pertaining to ella, while the drug has been found to cause abortions in pregnant rats and rabbits:  “Embryofetal loss was noted in all pregnant rats and in half of the pregnant rabbits,” the FDA declared.

Jeanne Monahan of the Family Research Council writes that, like RU-486, ella not only works to prevent implantation but also causes embryos to be aborted post-implantation. She writes, “Plan B can prevent an embryo from implanting in the uterus, thereby causing its demise.  However, Plan B cannot terminate an already implanted embryo…. Ella can cause the demise of an embryo that is already implanted in its mother’s womb, in addition to preventing implantation after fertilization.”  Dr. Rich Poupard of the Life Training Institute (who doesn’t think that Plan B likely acts as an abortifacient) says that “ella is basically RU-486.” He explains that both drugs act to block implantation, and, if implantation does occur, they act to prevent progesterone from adhering to the uterine lining, thereby denying the embryo the nutrients it needs to survive.

Obamacare forces pro-life individuals and businesses to subsidize abortions.

Does dispensing the morning-after pill to teens reduce teen pregnancies?

From the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

A government scheme to give teenagers the morning-after pill free of charge at pharmacies in a bid to cut down on unwanted pregnancies has led to a rise in sexually transmitted diseases, research shows. A study has found that the policy simply encouraged young people to have unprotected sex and had failed to cut down the number of under-age pregnancies.

Professors Sourafel Girma and David Paton of Nottingham University compared areas of England where the scheme was introduced with those where it was not or where it was implemented later. They found that pregnancy rates for girls aged under 16 remained the same while the rates of sexually transmitted diseases increased by 12 per cent in those areas where the pill was available free from chemists. Prof Paton said: “We find that offering the morning-after pill free of charge didn’t have the intended effect of cutting teenage pregnancies but did have the unfortunate side of effect of increasing sexually transmitted infections.

Remember, those pills were bought with taxpayer dollars, and the morning-after-pill can cause abortions in some cases, by preventing a fertilized egg from implanting. But what do you expect, it’s the socialist UK.