Abortion pill tragedy.

On September 10, Holly Patterson of Livermore, California, visited a Planned Parenthood clinic in Hayward to secure an abortion. The unmarried teen, who had recently turned 18, was six to eight weeks pregnant but had not told her parents. She was offered the choice of surgery or the controversial abortion pill RU-486. Opting for the latter, she received the first dose, as well as another drug (misoprostol) which she was to take the next day. Whereas RU-486 blocks progesterone, a hormone that helps maintain pregnancy, misoprostol causes uterine contractions that help terminate the pregnancy.

Four days later, suffering from severe pain and heavy bleeding, Miss Patterson was rushed to a hospital emergency room by her boyfriend (her parents were still unaware of her plight). She was given pain killers and released, but returned on September 17, vomiting and still in great pain. She died that afternoon.

The technical term for RU-486 is mifepristone. It is produced by Danco Laboratories, a self-described "women's health pharmaceutical company," and marketed as an "early option pill" under the brand name Mifeprex. It was approved by the Clinton-era Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000 and, according to Danco, has been used by more than one million women worldwide and about 200,000 within the U.S.

Danco spokeswoman Heather O'Neill told the November 3 Washington Post that the rate of complication for RU-486 usage is two per 1,000 women, but Rep. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) contends that "in 5-8 percent of cases, RU-486 causes severe complications." Also, according to DeMint, "At least three other women have died from RU-486 in North America and at least 13 have required blood transfusions due to excessive blood loss." The congressman speculates that "if airplanes were as dangerous as RU-486 no reasonable woman would ever fly," since "a woman is 200 times more likely to be injured or killed from RU-486 than in an airplane crash."

On October 31, the Alameda County coroner's office issued a preliminary report concluding that Miss Patterson did indeed die from "septic shock, due to endomyometritis [uterus-related blood infection] due to therapeutic, drug-induced abortion."

On November 6, Representatives DeMint and Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) introduced legislation (dubbed "Holly's Law" in honor of Miss Patterson) to suspend the FDA's approval of RU-486 pending a General Accounting Office review of the flawed process which led to the FDA's reprehensible rush to judgment in 2000 regarding the killer pill. The bill (H.R. 3453) attracted 59 original co-sponsors. Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) reportedly intends to introduce a companion measure in the Upper Chamber. Monty and Helen Patterson, Holly's parents, have enthusiastically endorsed the "RU-486 Suspension and Review Act of 2003."