But it is approved here in the UK. And France. And I would expect through most of Europe, too. Stop trying to create the impression that this is some obscure, untested drug – it’s been in use since 1988.

Also, it’s mifepristone. RU-486 sounds really scarey, I know, but that’s not it’s name. It’s a testing designation used prior to it getting approval and a name in ‘88. RU refers to the developing company.

Canada hasn’t approved mifepristone. Odd, because they use methotrexate instead for the same purpose. Methotrexate is not a nice drug – it’s side effects are really very nasty indeed. This is a bit out of my area of knowledge, but what I have been able to research suggests the reason is political – methotrexate is a multipurpose drug (It’s also used for cancer and arthritus), while mifepristone has no common uses other than abortion and thus faces a lot of political meddling that puts the producers off even trying to get it approved. The same reason approval in the US was over a decade after approval in France – Bush Senior pulled a few strings and for the FDA to put it on a blacklist before they even considered approval. It took a long time before it was taken off the list. It wasn’t until twelve years after France approved the drug that the FDA finally did so too.

Also we need to start holding abortion advocates accountable for trying to teach women that abortion is a good and normal thing to do. Yes, the THOUGHT is normal — but so are a lot of thoughts. But we don’t encourage people to ACT on those thoughts.