Ru 486 Misconceptions Myths and Morals - ressourcesfeministes

RU 486this procedure unnecessary’ (Vigy, 1991:18). Combined withthe exceedingly convenient timing of events from the Rio deJaneiro convention, this indicates a contrived history ofevents operative at all levels.International Affirmation and CriticismThe decision to put RU 486 back on the market pertainedonly to France. Roussel Uclaf had decided not to market thedrug in other countries. 9 Meanwhile, in November 1988,the US-based Reproductive Health Technologies Project wasset up by the private consulting firm Bass and Howes inWashington. Assembling an unusual group of people (seeIntroduction), the Reproductive Technologies Health Projectinitiated a well-funded campaign which extends even toAustralia. Here, its uncritical pro-RU 486 information packethas been distributed to all women’s centers and state-basedwomen’s units. With the slogan ‘New Technologies/NewChoices’ it began a campaign to convince politicians and thecommunity at large to put pressure on Roussel Uclaf todistribute the drug in the USA and other countries.The Reproductive Health Technologies Project is explicitin its support for the abortion pill—based on Roussel Uclafmaterial. Its packet contains a sample letter which should besent to Roussel Uclaf and Hoechst to urge them to stopkeeping American women—and women elsewhere in theworld—from access to their ‘moral property’. Their effortswere soon augmented by a ‘historical campaign’ from theFeminist Majority: ‘RU 486 is safe and amazingly effective…itis simple’, and, ‘frankly, there are few steps as significant—and long-lasting—as the action we can take to bring RU 486into the United States’ (Communiqué, 1990). Moreover, bothgroups assert that RU 486 has enormous potential to treatother diseases from glaucoma to breast cancer. Bothcampaigns are also unequivocal in their assessment that thedebate is entirely between the ‘bad’ anti-abortionists and the‘good’ scientists who developed this miracle drug in the14