The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, an abortion business has filed a lawsuit to weaken the safety laws surrounding the usage of the dangerous abortion drug RU 486.
BPAS had hoped to lobby the Department of Health to change the legal interpretation of laws on the drugs from saying all abortion drugs must be taken at the abortion center to saying they only need to be presented at the center. Although the drug is responsible for killing more than 13 women worldwide, including in England, BPAS wants to prevent women from taking both parts of the two-part drug at a hospital or medical center even though they may face significant medical complications.
Because the British government wouldn’t budge, BPAS is taking its case to the British High Court.
Ann Furedi, chief executive of abortion business, told the London Telegraph the opposition to the plan to change the protocols from the British government isn’t about protecting women’s health but “largely about whether this was politically expedient at this time.”
She claims denying women access to the hospital or clinic to take the second part of the abortion drug is safe “beyond doubt” despite the fact that more than 1,100 women in the United States alone have been injured by the drug, according to 2006 FDA figures, requiring hospitalizations, blood transfusions and facing infections that have caused their deaths.
Paul Tully, the general secretary for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, responded to the High Court challenge, and said his group will seek leave to intervene in the court case.
“Abortion is an appalling ordeal for women, as well as the killing of an unborn child. In taking this legal action BPAS is trivializing abortion and jeopardizing women’s welfare,” he said.
“We will seek to intervene in this case on behalf of unborn children, whose right to life has been protected from the time of Hippocrates in ancient Greece to the establishing of international human rights law in modern times. In contrast, the right to abortion – the killing of an unborn baby – does not exist in English law or any international human rights instrument,” he added.
He said it is “deeply disturbing” that BPAS is ignoring figures showing how the abortion drug has hurt women and points out how the nature of the drug means that the woman must live with her abortion over the course of a number of days.
The president of Roussel Uclaf, the original makers of RU 486, said “The woman must live with this for a full week. This is an appalling psychological ordeal.”
“Use of RU486/misoprostol may cause any of the following: hemorrhage requiring blood transfusion, severe pain requiring strong pain killers, incomplete abortion, rupture of the uterus, vaginal bleeding, abdominal cramping, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headache, muscle weakness, dizziness, flushing, chills, backache, difficulty in breathing, chest pain, palpitations, rise in temperature and fall in blood pressure,” Tully said. “The number and diverse nature of the side effects of RU486/ misoprostol point to the fact that these are powerful chemicals.”
BPAS does about 25 percent of the drug-based abortions in the United Kingdom and it, along with Marie Stopes, does more abortions than any other business.
The Department of Health is contesting the case, which will be heard on January 28.
In the United States, women take the second part of the drug at home and do not need to be at the abortion center to do so.
