Should We Remove Restrictions? : YES: RU-486 is the moral property of all women, yet their interests are being held hostage to politics and the profit motive.

RU-486, a new medication, could improve the lives of millions of women in this country. Taken in tablet form, RU-486 is a safe, effective and non-invasive method to terminate early pregnancy during the first 63 days. It is also less expensive than existing methods.

What’s more, RU-486 is a treatment for the sometimes deadly endocrine disorder, Cushing’s syndrome. It shows promise as a treatment for some of the 44,000 women who die each year of breast cancer. RU-486 may also be used to treat endometriosis, difficult childbirth, meningioma and osteoporosis. It may be an effective, easy and cheap contraceptive.

Despite these widely acknowledged benefits, politics, money and power are withholding this medical breakthrough from American women. The National Right to Life Committee has made a top priority of stopping the introduction of RU-486 into this country. With RU-486, it would no longer have those misleading pictures of late-term fetuses to promote its cause. RU-486 terminates pregnancy as early as the blastocyst stage, which is characterized by a cluster of cells without form, or, more usually, during the early embryonic stage before fetal development.

To appease anti-abortion groups and anti-abortion members of Congress, President Bush’s Food and Drug Administration has placed an import alert on RU-486, banning its importation for personal use. Yet scientists testified at a congressional hearing that the import alert has seriously hindered scientific research into the medication’s many uses.

Before the alert on RU-486 was imposed, laboratory scientists were able to obtain adequate quantities of the compound routinely from the manufacturer. They were not required to deal with the FDA. Now, with the alert, scientists who are not even doing research on human subjects face scrutiny from the FDA, and some have been deterred from obtaining the drug for their research.

While the anti-abortion forces proclaim innocence in stopping RU-486 research on non-abortion uses, their hypocrisy has been exposed by the introduction of a bill that would ban all RU-486 research. It is sponsored by Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), a recognized anti-abortion leader.

The Bush Administration is also pressuring the World Health Organization to stop research on the drug. Citing these and other indications of a hostile political climate on abortion rights, Roussel Uclaf and Hoechst A.G., the pharmaceutical giants that manufacture RU-486, refuse to market the medication here.

To counter the European perception of widespread opposition to abortion in this country, American women, scientists, health-care professionals and political leaders have been working to develop political momentum to bring RU-486 into this country. They are not standing still as anti-abortion zealots try to stop scientific progress and the pharmaceutical industry tries to protect itself from controversy.

The Feminist Majority Foundation has collected 250,000 petitions from individuals and 2,000 petitions from scientists demanding the introduction of RU-486 into the United States. Some of the nation’s most prestigious scientific organizations, including the American Medical Assn., American Public Health Assn., American Pediatric Society and the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science have called for the availability of RU-486 for research and for its use as medically indicated.

New Hampshire--the home state of presidential aide John Sununu--has just passed a resolution urging the availability of RU-486. California and New York may soon follow New Hampshire’s lead. Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has introduced legislation to remove the FDA’s import alert. The Los Angeles City Council has just voted its support for the Wyden bill. And New York City Mayor David Dinkins has launched a campaign to involve big-city mayors in the drive for RU-486.

Yet pharmaceutical companies are still holding hostage this woman-saving medication and slowing down desperately needed research. American women do not have the wide range of fertility-control options available to women in Europe. Nor do they benefit from the low prices of the European market, where birth-control pills and contraceptive implants can be obtained at a fraction of the cost charged here. Could it be that pharmaceutical companies limit fertility-control agents in the lucrative American market in order to keep prices high for existing products?

The struggle is over who will control women’s lives and the reproduction of the human race. RU-486, as the French minister of health stated, “is the moral property of women.” Women in the United States and worldwide are demanding what is rightfully ours.