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RU-486’s Unintended Upside

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There are a lot of reasons why RU-486 (or mifepristone or the abortion pill) is a good thing. For women who wish to abort a pregnancy in its early stages, the pill can offer a non-invasive method that ensures the woman’s privacy and allows her to avoid the long waits and big waiting rooms at clinics. This we anticipated.

But an interesting, and (at least for me) unforeseen side effect of RU-486’s availability is that it stymies clinic protesters. As Sara Robinson put it, they’re all dressed up with no one to terrorize. Which clinic can they stand in front of and at whom can they scream obscenities if there’s no place that we can point to as an old-fashioned “abortion clinic”? What if, instead, women seeking abortions can just go to their gynecologist’s office, take a pill, go home, and wait it out?

This may increasingly be the way that abortions take place. RU-486 use has been rising steadily since it became available in the US in 2000. Its availability, again according to Robinson, has seriously slowed clinic violence and, relatedly, stopped the attrition of abortion providers, an issue that was plaguing the profession and reducing access to abortion, particularly for women in poor and/or rural areas. RU-486 allows women to bypass moralizing pharmacists and to terminate their pregnancies with dignity.

Robinson argues that increased reliance on RU-486 will spell the end for the wingnut part of the anti-abortion movement. I’m not quite that optimistic. But a few less women harassed is a damn good start.

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