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Population
Control and RU-486: The Hidden Agenda
By David C. Reardon, Ph.D.
Population control advocates insist
that expanded access to abortion is essential to improving the status and health of women
throughout the world. Indeed, this message was tirelessly promoted by Hillary Clinton and
U.S. officials at a long series of recent U.N. conferences dealing with population growth
and women's rights.
Pro-lifers are obviously opposed to any effort to expand
abortion access around the world. In the current battle over the foreign operations
appropriation bill, they are seeking to reinstate a policy that banned the distribution of
funds to organizations that perform or promote abortions. If they succeed in adding this
restrictive language, the White House is threatening to veto the bill.
On the surface, this would appear to be just another battle
over abortion rights. Should women, of any country, have the right to abortion or not? In
reality, the issue is much more complex.
Many proponents of population control honestly believe that
these programs will expand the rights of women and improve their lives. In contrast to
these humanitarians, however, there is another group of population controllers who want to
reduce individual rights at the expense of women.
These are the zealots. They are the ones who make excuses for
programs that involve coerced sterilizations, forced abortions, or the withholding of food
or medical care unless poor women "voluntarily" accept IUDs or Norplant
insertions.
Some zealots, such as Paul Ehrlich, are doomsayers who
believe that population growth threatens the survival of humanity. "Injustice is
preferable to ruin," is one of their most oft-repeated quotes.
Other zealots are not afraid of ruin; they fear loss of
privilege. This latter group believes that higher birth rates will actually improve
the political and economic power of developing countries -- but at the expense of U.S. and
European dominance.
In short, these zealots are not seeking to advance the rights
and welfare of the poor. Just the opposite. They are actually elitists who see population
control as a means of keeping the "rabble" in their place.
Naturally, these elitists are rarely so blunt. They are a
civilized bunch, after all, and generally take care to sound remarkably like their
humanitarian friends.
That is one of the problems in this debate. One can never be
sure of a population controller's motives. Humanitarian? Doomsayer? Elitist? Or a mix of
all three?
Population controllers of all stripes tend to gravitate
toward humanitarian rhetoric. For example, Professor Garrett Hardin is one of the most
enduring and preeminent proponents of population control. In the early 1960s, before the
modern feminist movement was born, Hardin popularized the argument that abortion is part
of a "woman's right to control her own body."
But in publications for population control specialists,
Hardin argues that "freedom to breed is intolerable." He believes the
reproductive rights of women and men should actually be subservient to public policy. Like
many zealots, he has defended and even applauded China's brutal one-child policy.
Unfortunately, many overseas population programs are run by
zealots of a similar stripe. They are fluent in humanitarian lingo but are actually
hostile to individual freedom. While pledging to advance women's health, they advise
clients to use dangerous birth control technologies without even informing them of the
risks. As true elitists, they believe the poor are too ignorant to make an informed
choice, so they make it for them.
For example, dangerous IUDs that are banned in America are
freely distributed in developing countries, often as a requirement for obtaining basic
health care. For true believers of population control, even a dangerous contraceptive is
better than none.
Human Guinea Pigs
The poor are also the primary targets for experimental programs. In a recent documentary
"The Human Laboratory," BBC journalists found that population controllers had
tested Norplant on women in Bangladesh without the proper disclosures necessary to obtain
informed consent.
Furthermore, when women with serious side effects asked to
have the Norplant inserts removed, they were refused on the grounds that their withdrawal
from the program would upset the test results. Some investigators have concluded that the
complaints of many Bengali women were omitted from the final data in an effort to minimize
the perceived risks of the drug.
After using these test results to receive FDA approval in the
U.S., Norplant manufacturers now face several class action suits brought by American women
who are making the same complaints alleged by the "guinea pigs" of Bangladesh.
Unfortunately for Norplant promoters, American women have more legal recourse than
Bengalis.
The same BBC documentary reported that women in the
Philippines and Mexico have also been used as guinea pigs for a new experimental pregnancy
vaccine. The HCG vaccine makes a woman's body reject new pregnancies. According to human
rights activists, it has been administered, without the consent or knowledge of patients,
as a "piggyback" vaccine in a series of tetanus vaccine programs.
Many Filipinos were initially curious as to why only women of
reproductive age had been eligible for the free tetanus vaccine, especially since tetanus
is more common among young men. But when women who had recently received the "tetanus
vaccine" began having an inordinate number of miscarriages, this bureaucratic
curiosity turned into charges of conspiracy. Subsequent lab tests of the tetanus vaccine
confirmed it had indeed been laced with an HCG vaccine.
Population control zealots who have little or no regard for
individual rights could hardly be expected to respect local customs, religious beliefs, or
national sovereignty. They are especially frustrated with the governments of predominantly
Catholic and Moslem countries where abortion remains illegal or strictly limited.
Many leading population control organizations, such as the
International Planned Parenthood Federation, have adopted policies that aggressively
promote abortion even in countries where it is illegal. They argue that illegal abortions
may be "part of the process of stimulating change."
The Mad Rush Toward RU-486
The FDA's recent approval of the abortion inducing drug RU-486 may make it even easier for
population control zealots to "stimulate change."
Five years ago, presidential candidate Bill Clinton promised
population control advocates that he would hasten FDA approval of the new abortion drug.
He kept his word.
Following Clinton's election, the FDA urged RU-486
manufacturer Rouessel Uclaf to submit the drug for approval. After much foot dragging, the
company declined, expressing its fear of product liability claims and bad publicity from
anti-abortion activists. Then in May of 1994, the administration announced that it had
convinced the company to "donate" the patent to the Population Council, one of
America's most zealous promoters of international population control. This agreement would
let Roussel Uclaf off the hook and give the administration its abortion drug.
To further grease the skids, the FDA agreed to lower the
standards for testing and review which are normally required before approval of a new
drug. The Population Council would be able to obtain approval by spending only $8 million
in drug testing trials, compared to the $100 million or more that drug companies must
usually spend. In addition, the target date for approval was reduced to six months. The
approval time for most pharmaceuticals, ranging from migraine treatments to chemotherapy
drugs, typically requires six years or more.
In July of 1996, an FDA advisory panel recommended approval
of RU-486 even though the American clinical trials were still not complete. Most shocking
of all, this recommendation was made despite the unimpeachable testimony of Dr. Mark
Louviere, a physician who treated a woman for a life-threatening hemorrhage two weeks
after the RU-486 was administered. The woman had lost one-half to two-thirds of her blood.
But what really bothered Dr. Louviere (but not the committee, apparently) was even though
he reported the complication to the Planned Parenthood clinic which administered the
experimental drug, a representative of the same Planned Parenthood clinic subsequently
told the media that there had been "no complications among the 238 women" they
aborted in this manner.
Normally, one might expect the FDA to immediately reject an
application for approval in the face of such incontrovertible evidence of poor record
keeping, public deception, and even outright fraud. But this was a special case. This was
an abortion drug.
Risks Versus Benefits of RU-486
Why did RU-486 receive the "most favored drug" treatment? While there may be
reasons for accelerating the approval of potentially life-saving or life-extending drugs,
(such as in the case of AIDS treatments) no such reasons apply here. RU-486 is clearly
intended only for non-therapeutic, elective abortions. There is no health crisis demanding
this treatment before its risks are properly established. Even as an elective treatment,
patients already have a surgical option, which abortion proponents insist is already safe,
effective, and inexpensive.
The rush to approve RU-486 is even more puzzling in light of
the European experience with this drug. Ru-486 abortions have actually proven to cost the
same as a surgical abortion, in part because it requires three or more visits to the
clinic or hospital, more staff, and careful monitoring.
These precautions are necessary because of multiple side
effects, including heavy bleeding, cardiac arrest, and frequent incomplete abortions. Even
the Population Council anticipates that the rates for hemorrhaging, hospitalization, and
surgical interventions to stop bleeding will each fall into the range of one to two
percent. Projecting these rates on 1.5 million abortions per year, each of these
"rare" complications would effect 15,000 to 30,000 women per year. Combined with
the problem of cardiac arrest, which has resulted in the death of at least one woman and
heart attacks for several others, these complication rates suggest that Roussel Uclaf's
decision not to market the drug in the U.S. may reflect greater concern about litigious
Americans than about pro-life Americans.
Nor is this procedure less stressful than surgical abortion.
Most Ru-486 patients experience severe cramping, nausea, vomiting, and bleeding. Also,
according to Roussel Uclaf spokesman Lester Hyman, "there is considerable pain
attached to the procedure.
The emotional drain can be even greater. Rather than being
"over with" in ten minutes, an RU-486 abortion takes days, sometimes a week or
more. Even if the woman can ignore the nausea and pain, she is still faced with days of
anxiety. She must worry about whether the procedure will work. (For up to one in ten
women, it does not.) Plus, she will be inevitably plagued with questions about whether her
fetus is alive or dead, or suffering at any particular moment. Finally, if the aborted
human fetus is expelled into the woman's sanitary napkin--with its head, arms, and legs
clearly intact--this self-incriminating sight may be burned into her memory for the rest
of her life. In this last respect, the emotional impact of such chemically induced
abortion may be even more pronounced than it is for women undergoing "blind"
surgical abortions. It is no wonder, then, that even Edouard Sakiz, former president of
Roussel Uclaf, admits that RU-486 abortions involve an "appalling psychological
ordeal."
Because of these problems, the opposition to RU-486 includes
not only the usual anti-abortion "suspects" but also some pro-abortion
feminists. While the former believe it is a drug used for immoral purposes, the latter
believe RU-486 is simply inferior to and more dangerous than surgical abortion.
Exporting Abortion
Despite all of these problems, population controllers and the U.S. government want RU-486
as quickly as possible and with minimal review. Why?
When properly administered, RU-486 is not safer, less
expensive, or more private than surgical abortion. But it does have one advantage: it is
more portable. Once it is granted FDA approval, it will be relatively easy to take into
Third World countries where abortion is not legally available.
The U.S. government spends millions of dollars each year to
"protect our national interests" through programs designed to suppress the
"excess" population growth of developing countries. As part of this effort, the
Clinton administration in particular has openly lobbied for expanding access to abortion
in the Third World. But this latter objective is blocked by two obstacles. First, abortion
is still illegal in many developing countries. Second, surgical abortion is more
technically complicated; it requires more in the way of medical facilities and training.
Despite its many flaws, RU-486 offers a way around both of these problems.
Since most developing countries do not have labs and agencies
governing the approval of drugs, their import restrictions, if any, are often linked to
approval by the U.S. FDA. "If a drug is safe enough for the Americans," they
assume, "it must be safe enough for us." Even in countries where abortion is
illegal, FDA approval is the key to exporting RU-486 for "other" medical
purposes.
Once it is brought into developing countries, RU-486 can be
easily transported and distributed. With a little training, it can be cheaply administered
by midwives. To avoid trouble with the law, or the conscience of individual patients,
these abortifacient treatments can be disguised under the euphemism of "menstrual
regulation."
Perhaps most important of all, since the citizens of
developing countries have far less recourse to civil courts than litigious Americans,
those who manufacture and distribute RU-486 in these countries will be shielded from
proper liability for the injuries that will inevitably occur.
For population controllers, this is a no-lose situation. When
women begin to die because the drug was not "properly administered" their deaths
will be blamed on the "archaic and patriarchal" laws that prevent easy access to
"safe and legal" abortions.
In this way, population control "spin masters" can
turn the expected complications of RU-486 to their own advantage. By driving up abortion
rates -- and corresponding maternal deaths--population control zealots will be able to put
more political pressure on Third World governments to legalize abortion in order to
"make it safe."
In short, the rush for FDA approval of RU-486 is not about
improving the welfare of American women. It is about exporting more abortions to the
"backward" people of the Third World. It is about protecting our national
interests--i.e. American dominance--by suppressing "excess births" in nations
which might otherwise compete for the economic resources and political power which we now
enjoy.
The FDA review of RU-486 has been a thinly veiled sham, its
conclusion predetermined by a "national interest" in increasing abortion
"options." For the Clinton regime, expanding the tools of population
controllers--here and abroad-- is more important than protecting the health of individual
women--here and abroad.
Conclusion
The record of U.S.-funded population control programs is not an encouraging one. These
programs may be supported and funded by humanitarians, but it is sadly clear that they are
often run by zealots who have little regard for individual rights, cultural and religious
norms, or national sovereignty.
It is not only pro-lifers who should be concerned. All people
of good will should look beyond the rhetoric and join in an effort to ensure the
protection of individual freedom, patients' rights, and national sovereignty.
Reprinted from The Post-Abortion Review, 5(4), Fall 1997. Copyright 1997, The Elliot
Institute.
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