Washington – Health officials said Monday that they have ruled out the abortion pill RU-486 in one of two deaths in women who had taken the drug. The second remains under investigation.
The one death was unrelated to either abortion or use of the pill, the Food and Drug Administration said. The second woman showed symptoms of infection.
Four other women have died of infections after undergoing pill-triggered abortions. The women tested positive for Clostridium sordellii, a common but rarely fatal bacterium.
The FDA has warned doctors to watch for infection by the bacterium. But the drug, also called Mifeprex or mifepristone, has not been proved to be the cause in any of those cases.
The recent deaths had sparked renewed calls to ban the abortion pill. Republican Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma urged passage of legislation that would suspend sales of RU-486 after the latest deaths were made public in March. The two want the Government Accountability Office to review how the FDA approved the pill in 2000.
Neither of the two women followed FDA-approved instructions for the pill, which require taking three tablets of one drug, followed by two of another drug two days later. Instead of swallowing the final two tablets, the second course of pills was inserted vaginally in the women, an “off-label” use that studies have shown effective and that has been recommended by most of the nation’s abortion clinics because of fewer side effects.
