Pregnancy is not a disease

Tired of waiting for a drug company to apply to import the abortion drug RU486, the international abortion clinic chain Marie Stopes, is going to use 90 pregnant women for a trial of a toxic anti-cancer drug in its Sydney clinic next month.

Taking a “disease model” approach to pregnancy, the clinic will combine one of the most dangerous anti-cancer drugs on the market with an anti-ulcer drug, to induce abortion in women up to seven weeks pregnant.

Will the Sydney women be told what they could be in for? My research on abortion over a long period gives me no cause to hope they will be fully informed.

Methotrexate is so hazardous it is given five pages in the US Physicians Desk Reference - most other drugs get a half page. Its side-effects are so “severely toxic” they are only considered justified to fight cancers and “disabling disease”. Yet it is to be inflicted on healthy pregnant women and healthy embryos.

Methotrexate and the anti-ulcerant misoprostol haven’t even been approved for abortion. They are being used “off label” despite manufacturers warnings against use in pregnant women.

Methotrexate works by blocking the essential vitamin folic acid. Women receive an injection of the drug, then four tablets of misoprostol taken five days, later causing bleeding and contractions.

According to the patient drug information on the Internet drug index RXlist, methotrexate can have fatal side effects. “Therefore, this medication should be used only to treat cancer or severe diseases …”

Is pregnancy a “severe disease”? No, but it’s being treated like it: a malignant mass to be obliterated by a teratogenic drug injected into women up to three times before it takes effect - which could take weeks.

Methotrexate is known to have the potential to damage human DNA. Cancer sufferers are warned the risk of genetic abnormalities may persist after discontinuing it.

Earlier studies have been criticised for using women and not animals first, and being ethically flawed because they failed to follow proper informed consent procedures.

The AMA’s Dr David Molloy, says "It's a major anti-cancer drug which has a wide range of toxic and at times lethal side effects, but it's not the sort of drug you would want to have unless you really had to have it".

One of the biggest problems with Methotrexate is the delay between injection and termination.

A US randomised trial found in 27 per cent of cases the women “continued to have cardiac activity by day 14 and were considered treatment failures”. Thirteen per cent experienced bleeding up to 56 days. A recent Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists report found about 60 per cent of women abort within 24 hours of the first misoprostol dose, but it could take three to four weeks “to reach cumulative abortion rates close to 90 per cent”.

Geoffrey Brodie, medical director of Australian Birth Control Services, said that when he used methotrexate on women in the past, 35 per cent took within five weeks to abort. Some didn’t abort at all and needed a surgical termination as well.

Authors of a 1996 Canadian study state: "the failure rate and the teratogenicity of methotrexate and misoprostol give cause for concern.” They acknowledge the possibility of babies born with abnormalities where a pregnancy has been ongoing due to women being lost to follow-up.

Misoprostol carries its own risks. It can weaken the body’s ability to fight disease. There are concerns about the lasting effect on cervical and uterine tissue. The drug has been found in the egg follicles of women administered it. No one knows what this might mean for a woman’s long-term health, the health of future pregnancies and children born.

Canadian scientist Dr Ed Napke has observed: “One must remember that chemical surgery, namely exposing the body to chemical products, is more intrusive than physical surgery.”

Then there are the emotional effects. Some studies report chemical abortion as more psychologically harrowing. Significant numbers of women report the anxiety caused by the long wait for the pregnancy to pass too difficult and that the bleeding was “emotionally difficult to see”.

If the Sydney trial “goes well”, Marie Stopes plans to use the drug in its eight clinics in other states. So more women can be “treated” for pregnancy.

Marie Stopes seems to think a few toxic and lethal side effects are a small price to pay to secure medical termination for women. What we are seeing is the triumph of ideology over women’s health.

Research has shown that many women would have made a choice other than abortion had those choices been forthcoming. But rather than making the changes necessary to give them the support they need, the best we can do is offer women toxic drug cocktails and make them feel their baby is a cancer we should all be rid of.