In part, RU486 is 'the pill' awaited for centuries by women in difficulty and still threatened by the danger of botched abortions in many countries. This is enough for it to be the object of innumerable articles in the professional and lay press, and of so many private and public debates. The recently demonstrated possibility of stopping the development of pregnancy with a convenient combination of RU486 and a cheap, safe, orally active prostaglandin, and thus the potential of defusing in part the abortion issue, has again headed the front pages of the news. The 'political chemistry' of RU486 (Hogden, 1991), which is still in full swing, delays its introduction and its use by women in need, particularly in the developing world, and by patients suffering from a number of diseases potentially treatable by the drug.
PIP: In several industrialized countries, women can take the antiprogesterone RU-486 orally, followed 48 hours later by a prostaglandin to interrupt early pregnancy. The prostaglandin should be administered orally because of cardiovascular incidents linked to the injectable form. It would have been better if a hormone scientist associated with the development of RU-486 had presented RU-486 as a menstrual regulator than within the context of abortion. He proposes the term contragestion (contra-gestation) for RU-486 because it is neither contraception nor abortion. He did not use the term soon enough after RU-486's discovery, resulting in confusion. So the public began referring to RU-486 as the morning after pill. France has one law for contraception and another for abortion (termination after a positive pregnancy test). The law requires women to wait 1 week after making the decision to undergo abortion before actually undergoing abortion. There is no law covering the period between conventional contraception and classical abortion. This left researchers only 1 option when testing and registering RU-486: under the abortion law. This further prevented the acceptance of the word contragestion. Progestins and IUDs also interrupt early pregnancy and are therefore contragestives. A key difference between these 2 methods and RU-486 is that RU-486 use requires women to make a conscious decision to interrupt the pregnancy. RU-486 should be a backup to contragestive and contraceptive methods. RU-486 is needed because there is a medical problem with abortion.