I do not do abortion diaries. I don’t even participate in them other than to say I’m pro choice but this news NYT story caught my eye, so I thought I’d share it with you.

The gist? If Roe v Wade is overturned, there won’t be a return to back alley and coat hanger abortions because there’s a drug for something else on the market that, although no one knows exactly what the side effects may be, can be used by poor women to abort spontaneously. And hey, even if there are coat hanger abortions, the antibiotics we have these days will help women live through the horror. On top of that, rich women can just travel elsewhere to have their abortions so they shouldn’t worry either.

I’m not kidding.

Even if the court restricts or eliminates the right to an abortion, the often-raised specter of a return to back-alley abortions is not likely to be realized, said Dr. Beverly Winikoff, president of Gynuity Health Services, a nonprofit group that supports access to abortion. “The conditions that existed before 1973 were much different than what they are in 2005,” she said. “We have better antibiotics now and better surgical treatments.”

But no change is bigger than the advent of an inexpensive drug called misoprostol, which the federal Food and Drug Administration approved for treatment of ulcers in 1988, but which has been used in millions of self-administered abortions worldwide. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, freeing states to ban abortion, this common prescription drug, often known by the brand name Cytotec, could emerge as a cheap, relatively safe alternative to the practices that proliferated before Roe.

“We won’t go back to the days of coat hangers and knitting needles,” said Dr. Jerry Edwards, an abortion provider in Little Rock, Ark. “Rich women will fly to California; poor women will use Cytotec.”

Because it was never intended for use in abortions, it has not been widely tested for safety and effectiveness.

A spokeswoman for Pfizer, which sells misoprostol under the name Cytotec, said the company does not comment on off-label use.

Of course they don’t – they’re making money off the poor – especially in Brazil where, according to the article, “misoprostol is the method of choice for up to 90 percent of all abortions”. What’s to comment on?

Dr. Jain said researchers still need to learn more about what happens when the drug doesn’t work. Currently, if women fail to terminate a pregnancy using RU-486 and misoprostol, they still have a surgical abortion. But if abortion were illegal, many of these women might carry to term. “Data suggest it causes birth defects, including facial paralysis and limb defects,” Dr. Jain said. “It’s hard to quantify, but yes, there probably is a risk.”

And widespread use of misoprostol could have another unintended consequence, said Mitchell Creinin, director of family planning at the University of Pittsburgh, who has run clinical trials on the drug. In Brazil, if women have problems with the drug, they go to the hospital to be treated for miscarriage. If women in the United States start using misoprostol for abortions, Dr. Creinin said, “someone going through a miscarriage is going to be looked at suspiciously, like, ‘Did you do something?’ “

Do you trust the government not to prosecute a woman or her doctor for this off-label use?

I posted it. You talk about it. All I have to say is this: this is 2005. Women deserve the right to control their own bodies and no law should deprive any woman of that right, no matter how far medicine has advanced or despite any alternatives out there that might serve as some crude substitute for an authentic, well-monitored medical procedure.

End the oppression of women now.

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