No Escaping the Pain

Observers of the abortion debate disagree about nearly every topic, but for the last decade, one prediction has won pretty near consensus: When RU-486 arrives, it will change everything. Now that the FDA has approved the "abortion pill," we'll get our first experience of an all-chemical abortion--what some pro-lifers call a "human pesticide." Previous methods involved a direct surgical removal of the child, but RU-486 will be an inside job.

For doctors, there is no need to hang out an "abortionist" shingle or move to a separate clinic. In a Kaiser Foundation survey, 45% of family-practice doctors said they would be willing to dispense RU-486, though only 3% had ever done a surgical abortion. Abortion would no longer be a clinic event, but diffused broadly through the offices of all kinds of doctors.

Increasing availability suggests increasing numbers and approval. The average American, neither strongly pro-life nor strongly pro-choice, tends to think that abortion is OK as long as it doesn't look like a baby yet. RU-486 delivers on that queasy-conscience need better than surgical abortion does. Some pro-choicers hope the pill's popularity will force pro-lifers to give up the fight for the smallest unborn children.

All in all, RU-486 looks superficially like a disaster for the pro-life movement. Instead of abortion being a traumatic and bloody process, it will be irresistibly convenient. You just pop a pill, right?

Not so fast. There are reasons to think American women may not love RU-486 as much as pro-choice activists hope they will.

After all, not many easy-poppin' pills induce days of bleeding, accompanied by pain and nausea. RU-486 is rough on the system, because it is, after all, intended to destroy a healthy process. Intentionally eating a week-old hamburger is a reasonable analogy. For some women, the experience is only unpleasant, but for others it's more serious.

In one French drug trial, 1.4% of the women needed medical intervention to stop the bleeding, with some requiring hospitalization and transfusions. In terms of medical risk, the percentage is tiny; but in terms of word-of-mouth, it could loom large. If every abortion in a typical year were an RU-486 abortion (not likely, but theoretically possible), the number of women needing medical care would be 21,000.

While medical evidence is often enough to convince people that RU-486 is bad news, there's another reason that women may not be too fond of the abortion pill.

"A woman who has an RU-486 abortion will have to face the devastating realization that this abortion was not done to me, but I myself was the active agent in causing the destruction of this emerging human life," says Guy Condon, executive director of the Care Net chain of pregnancy-care centers. "The psychological impact will be more devastating for the woman who uses RU-486."

In a surgical abortion, the woman lies passively on a table while gowned strangers on the other side of a drape take care of things in minutes. She can distance herself from the event and doesn't have to deal directly with its material outcome. In an RU-486 abortion, the experience goes on for days, and there is no one there to shield her from its effects.

David Reardon, director of the Elliot Institute and an expert on post-abortion grief, says that because the woman is the agent of the abortion, she loses one of the "crutches" that would otherwise help her fend off post-abortion grief: "She can't blame the abortionist." Reardon adds that the response to RU-486 may be quite different from the response to suction abortion, perhaps resembling the grief that often follows a late-term abortion.

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