-WaPo- Abortion Foes Want RU-486 Pill Pulled -*The effort focuses on the deaths in recent years of four to eight young women who had taken the medication, and especially the four deaths that involved a common but rarely fatal bacterium, Clostridium sordelli . A congressional subcommittee has scheduled a hearing today on what it called "the unsafe characteristics of RU-486."
But research into those lethal infections has unearthed new information that makes it less clear that complications from the abortion pill, sold as Mifeprex, caused the deaths.
The FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have implicated the clostridium bacterium in the deaths of more than a dozen other women after childbirth or miscarriage -- making it unclear whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the abortion pill and the infections.......
....Another scheduled speaker at the hearing is Monty Patterson, father of Holly Patterson. Since she succumbed to a clostridium infection after a medical abortion, her father has pressured federal officials to investigate the risks of RU-486, which he believes should be immediately taken off the market.
Mr Patterson- and the
Anti
Abortion
Propaganda
Industry (
AAPI) as well - would be much further ahead asking their questions of the right people.
The question that needs an answer is
"why was your daughter Holly NOT treated as what she actually was, a miscarriage patient". Why, for example, was no D&C performed to eliminate the possibility of retained tissue as a source of her described symptoms. It should be noted that the coroners report did not find that her death was actually caused by the use of the Mifeprex regimen.
We might also ask a similar question where the women who have died post spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) and shortly post partum.
Is there a lack of training in emergency room physicians that is leading to these deaths through either misdiagnosis or simply missed symptoms. Or are hospitals "dumping" patients back onto the street with a few analgesics rather than properly evaluating the appropriate care (in Holly's case perhaps an ultrtasound and/or vaginal swab would have prevented her death) and if this is so is it a symptom of a sick system that puts the almighty dollar ahead of patient care far too often. Is it time to recognize what civilized countries have long recognized - that proper medical care, funded and collectively paid for from the public purse, is a right of every citizen.
Mifepristone with a prostaglandin (the RU-486 regimen), induces a miscarriage. From a medical perspective it really makes no difference whether the miscarriage is spontaneous or induced - the outcome and the health contraindications are exactly the same.
If a patient presents at an emergency room and indicates that she has had a miscarriage - either spontaneous or induced - there is a pretty standard treatment and this very often involves a D&C as a precautionary measure in order to remove any possibly retained gestational material which may lead to sepsis and worse. Retained tissue is more frequently seen in medical and spontaneous abortions and less frequent in surgical abortion. At the very least there should be an ultrasound performed to properly diagnose whether that D&C is necessary. While the tissue often is absorbed or passed without incident the fact the patient arrived at the ER in pain should have been sufficient indication that the treatment could not be simply passive i.e. send her back home to "wait and see".
Holly Patterson was sent home. To date
NOBODY on the antichoice side has been screaming about the incompetence displayed at a hospital that treated an emergency patient in that way. Whether the physician was morally opposed to abortion or not (and the press releases from ValleyCare Health System in Pleasanton lead me to the belief that they were) there was still a duty to treat this young woman, and physicians do include D&C as a part of their training in their OBS rotation (although the talibornagain would even prevent this minimal training if they could).
Holly was not killed by RU-486 but her death was caused by the incompetence of a hospital and physician that failed to properly treat a miscarriage in the manner appropriate for an accredited hospital emergency department. How many more of the claimed Mifiprex deaths were under the same circumstances?
If the wrong people are being asked the wrong questions then we can expect more of the same and banning one medication will not stop the deaths following spontaneous abortions.
- Eileen`s always in process page -
Eileen
