Abortion pills

Lavin, D., Hoechst Will Stop Making Abortion Pill The Wall Street Journal, April 9,1997, p. A3. 

EHC) drugs contain high doses of oestrogens and/or gestagens as previously discussed. They are used after unprotected sexual intercourse or contraceptive failure and maybe accompanied by higher rates of undesirable side effects. They should not be confused with the abortion-pill mifepristone (RU486, M /eprex ). 

The popularity of lead abortion pills grew over the years, and by the early 1900s a few unethical chemists had started mass marketing them under the guise of controlling female problems. One popular brand... 

Dr. Hall s comparison of the amount of lead in abortion pills to the amount of lead in drinking water was both clever and instructive. But it was also misleading. The water Hall chose contained relatively low lead levels. As will be shown, tap water in turn-of-the-century America and England routinely contained lead levels far greater than those found in a dose of Dr. s Famous Female Pills. 

Brown acknowledged that lead caused amenorrhea and disrupted the menstrual cycle, but he did not document or mention any such cases in the Bacup epidemic. Similarly, Brown was able to document only 7 cases of lead-related abortions. The absence of more cases of abortion, stillbirth, and menstrual abnormalities is surprising. Brown s own estimates of the amount of lead in Bacup s household tap water suggest that the women there would have ingested, on a daily basis, an amount of lead at least 20 times greater than the amount contained in the recommended daily dose of Dr. s abortion pills. (This calculation assumes women... 

The one exception to this appears to be the literature on leaden abortion pills presented at the beginning of the chapter. But even here it is clear that it was not until 1905, with publication of Hall s article, that physicians became aware of how little lead was needed to induce abortion and disrupt menstruation. 

L. Lauder, RU-486 The Pill That Could End the Abortion Wars Against Your Family and Why Women Don t Have It, Addison Wesley, Reading, MA, 1991. 

Mifepristone and levonorgestrel are also synthetic steroids that contain an alkyne functional group. Mifepristone, also known as RU-486, induces an abortion if taken early in pregnancy. Its name comes from Roussel-Uclaf, the French pharmaceutical company where it was first synthesized, and from an arbitrary lab serial number. Levonorgestrel is an emergency contraceptive pill. It prevents pregnancy if taken within a few days of conception. 

In 1890, Alice worked in Leicester, England, as a machinist. She was thirty-three, married, and had four children. She was pregnant with yet another child. Perhaps her motivation was financial—she worked in an era when married women worked not by choice but out of necessity— or perhaps she just did not want another child. Whatever the case, Alice wanted an abortion. She purchased diachylon (lead plaster), rolled it into pills, and ate the pills. An abortion was induced a short time later. But Alice s homemade pills had some undesired side effects. She developed severe pains in her abdomen and extremities, javmdice, constipation, vomiting, and tremors in her hands. She entered the Leicester Infirmary on September 10, 1890, and by September 13, she had become comatose. She died soon thereafter. Alice s pills had not only terminated her pregnancy, they had also delivered her a fatal dose of lead. ... 

At a formal inquest, Anne s aunt testified that a few weeks prior to her death, she and Anne had walked by a chemist s shop. Anne pointed to the shop and said, That s where I get the stuff I take. When her aunt asked, What stuff Anne said, Diachylon. Her aunt was puzzled and said, I thought that was poison. To which Anne replied, Well, it does not poison me. I get two pennyworth and make it into pills so I can swallow them. Anne then explained to her aunt that she used the pills to induce abortions. The coroner ruled that Anne had died by taking a drug for a felonious purpose. " ... 

Real Life 8-1), preventing or slowing the removal of certain substances. This can cause the effective concentration of a drug to be greatly increased, reaching dangerous—even lethal—levels. Another example is the herbal antidepressant hypericum (St. John s wort), which can cause abortions and also interferes with the action of the birth control pill (Real Life 4-3). 

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