Progressive Nation

August 16th, 2005

Fact and Fiction: The Morning After Pill

Hugh Hewitt’s exemplifying the tendency of many on the religious Right to obscure the truth about RU-486 (aka, the “morning after pill”). The facts, which they would rather not tell you, suggest that the pill isn’t anything like the bad medicine they’re describing:

-all four of the women who have died after taking RU-486 didn’t follow the instructions- they took it viginally rather than orally, an off-label use not approved by the FDA;

-four deaths after thousands and thousands of successful uses is not enough evidence to that RU486 poses any sort of harm, much less a significant one. Just because someone takes Advil before they die doesn’t mean Advil caused their death (if you feel otherwise, you probably need to re-take elementary statistics);

-even considering these four deaths, RU486 is much safer than either surgical abortions or childbirth;

-the far right has ignored all of the above because their criticism of RU486 is not based on science but instead on religion. I don’t want religious fundamentalists telling me what medicines I should be allowed to take, and my guess is most Americans feel the same way.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 16th, 2005 at 3:40 am and is filed under Health Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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