News
Featured Image
 Shutterstock.com

Abortion activists campaigning to bring an abortion drug into Canada have leaked details to the Globe and Mail that Health Canada’s decision on RU-486 (mifepristone) will happen mid-January.

On top of stating that Health Canada is “poised to approve the drug,” abortion advocates have revealed that the European drug company Linepharma International, based in France, is submitting the application.

Linepharma manufactures only mifespristone and misoprostol, two drugs that allow a pregnant mother to kill and then expel her dead child. The company’s mission statement is: “To make high-quality medical abortion products available and to provide related services to all women worldwide.”

The drug hit the national spotlight in November 2013 when abortion activists revealed that an application for its approval had been submitted to Health Canada the year before and appeared to be stalled.

RU-486 has been touted by its advocates as the “gold standard” for medical abortion. But in practically every country where it has been approved the method has been connected to women’s deaths. Critics call the drug a volatile chemical cocktail.

Abortion activists in the Globe and Mail report accused the Ministry of Health of delaying the drug’s approval, pointing out that more than 700 days have passed since Linepharma submitted its application.

“Canada is the only developed country in the world without the gold standard for medical abortion care. It makes no sense,” said the Washington-based president of the National Abortion Federation, Vicki Saporta, in the report. “We have responded and the manufacturer has responded to every concern [the regulators] have raised. … We do expect that they will approve it in January.”

Health Canada would not confirm to LifeSiteNews the accuracy of the timeline in the Globe and Mail’s report, but it did say that it “undertakes a rigorous review of every drug submission, holding companies accountable for providing detailed and scientifically defensible information.”

“Health Canada does not disclose internal timelines for specific drug submissions,” Senior Media Relations Advisor Eric Morrissette said.

Health Canada told LifeSiteNews by email in March that if the drug receives a negative decision, it will not publicly disclose “when or why” the decision is issued.

Abortion activists have been quite vocal about Health Canada’s approval process for the drug. In November 2013, abortion activists Rebecca Cook and Dr. Sheila Dunn urged Health Canada in the pages of the Canadian Medical Association Journal to approve the drug for Canadian mothers seeking what the activists call a “safe, effective and often preferred method” of abortion. Not achieving their desired result at that time, activists have repeatedly leaked information to media sources, such as iPolitics.ca and now the Globe and Mail about the drug’s status at Health Canada. The media sources have consistently written largely sympathetic pieces towards the drug’s approval.

Jack Fonseca of Campaign Life Coalition (CLC) called the Globe and Mail’s report a “puff piece” to lobby the government to approve the drug.

“There’s clearly an agenda here with the timing of the article coming out, just prior to the date of the alleged decision. Obviously the information was leaked by the abortion industry that is pushing for the approval of the drug,” he told LifeSiteNews.

Fonseca called it “unconscionable” that abortion activists are lobbying for what he called a “human pesticide” that is “so dangerous to mothers and deadly to their babies.”

“Do they want more Canadian women in body bags?” he asked, referring to the Canadian woman who died during the drug’s clinical testing in 2001.

Fonseca believes the abortion lobby is leaking information to media because it is fearful the drug will not pass Health Canada’s scrutiny.

“What the abortion lobby is trying to do is overwhelm Health Canada’s decision makers with political pressure,” he said. “This lobby’s allies at the Globe and Mail and other media sources are helping them with this.”

To counter political pressure from abortion activists, CLC launched a petition to Health Canada a year ago, asking that the RU-486 application be “definitively rejected.” The petition, signed by over 6,000 people, has already been submitted to federal Minister of Health Rona Ambrose.

“When the pro-abortion lobby tries to overwhelm science and facts with political pressure, it’s telling that their agenda is not one of truth and not one that is healthy, and certainly not one that’s in the best interest of women and children,” Fonseca said.

Women who have died after taking an abortion drug:

  • In April, doctors in a Turin hospital could do nothing to save a woman who went into cardiac arrest after being administered the second part of the two-drug RU-486 combination that would expel the baby from her womb. The woman complained of not being able to breathe properly moments before her heart stopped beating. “Everything was regulated,” bewildered doctors told the press at the time.
  • In the United Stated alone, 14 women have died after taking RU-486, reported the Food and Drug Administration in 2011.
  • An Australian woman died in 2010 from a severe bacterial infection in her bloodstream a few days after having an RU-486 abortion at a Marie Stopes clinic.
  • The British government announced in January 2004 that two women had died from RU-486 abortions, describing their deaths as “suspected fatal reactions associated with the use of RU-486.”
  • 16-year-old Rebecca Tell Berg of Sweden was found dead in her boyfriend’s shower in 2003 after complications arose during her RU-486 abortion. The Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare in Gothenburg ruled that the woman “bled to death” as a “direct consequence” of her RU-486 abortion.
  • Canadian trials of the drug were halted in 2001 after a woman died from septic shock caused by her RU-486 abortion. The drug was effectively banned for use in Canada at the time.