Waterloo Courier
Opinion
Sunday, September 24, 1995 Page F3Group lied when it said ‘abortion pill’ test resulted in no complications
by Dr. Mark Louviere I could hardly believe my eyes when I read the first paragraph of an article in the September 2, Des Moines Register, ‘The clinical test of the ‘abortion pill’ has ended in Iowa, with no complications reported among the 238 women who ended unwanted pregnancies without surgery.”
This is untrue, and I can only surmise that the reason must have to do with the political volatility of the abortion issue. Regardless, it is imperative from a scientific standpoint that if Planned Parenthood is to be part of a nationwide clinical trial it must report the facts whether they agree with them or not.
I was called to the emergency room at Allen Memorial Hospital in Waterloo (names and dates are deleted for confidentiality). A woman was hemorrhaging and was in true shock due to loss of blood. Her pulse was racing and her blood pressure was 90/60. Routine resuscitative measures were undertaken, and my quick exam revealed that she had an incomplete abortion or miscarriage. The fetus was dead but the uterus was unable to expel the tissue on its own. This can occur with both and elective induced abortion and with a spontaneous miscarriage.
The patient’s husband informed me that his wife had received mifepristone and misiprostol at Planned Parenthood in Des Moines about two weeks earlier as part of the RU-486 clinical trial.
The patient’s hematocrit, a measure of the body’s blood volume, before surgery was 17.3 with normal being 38-47. She obviously lost over half her blood volume. I immediately took the patient to the operating room and removed the remainder of the uterine contents surgically. The patient required two units of blood in surgery and two units post-operatively. She was in hospital two days and fortunately survived the ordeal with no long-term sequelae.
If near death due to loss of half of one’s blood volume, surgery, and a transfusion of four units of blood do not qualify as a complication, I don’t know what does.
My views on abortion are irrelevant to the issue of truthful reporting in clinical trials; but to assuage those ho believe I am reporting this on the behalf of the pro-lifers, I will state my opinion as best I can.
I believe that abortion is morally wrong and that every woman and man who is involved in an abortion must answer to their creator. I would never perform an abortion. In spite of this, I believe that abortion should remain legal for a number of reasons that I will not detail here.
My point is that I am on the side of Planned Parenthood when it comes to safe and legal abortions. I called Planned Parenthood the day following the woman’s surgery and was put in contact with the director of the clinical trial. I told her of the patient’s medical record and sent it to Planned Parenthood so that they would be able to report my findings with the study’s final conclusions.
Physicians are trained as scientists. We learn early on that we must look at the results of our studies objectively even if we don’t like the outcome. My patient’s complications were rare and isolated, but were to be expected based on the percentage of failures of RU-486 noted in European literature.
To report to the people of Iowa, the Population Council, and to the FDA that there were “no complications” in Iowa is simply not true.
In the second paragraph of the Register article, Jill June , director of Planned Parenthood of Iowa states, “I have been told repeatedly that we were viewed as among the leading institutions for the clinical trial. We’re very proud of that.”
As one who believes abortion is wrong but believes very strongly in Planned Parenthood’s right to exist, and as a scientist, I am not proud at all of what I read.
Dr. Mark Louviere is a Waterloo physician.