Three RU-486 deaths not reported as "adverse effects"

From Fox News:

The FDA received reports of 607 adverse events involving the abortion drug RU-486 over a four-year period, it was reported this week.

The adverse events included five reported deaths and 68 cases of severe bleeding that required transfusions.

When Suzanne Poppema was reporting on her RU-486 patients to a National Abortion Federation gathering, she said it was difficult for her staff to get used to the amount of bleeding with a chemical abortion. Women would be standing at the reception desk with blood pooling around their feet, she said.

Late last month, federal officials confirmed that five women who died of toxic shock syndrome within a week of taking the drug to induce abortions had the same rare bacterial infection. Four of the deaths occurred in California and one in Canada. Three of these deaths were not among those included in the FDA's 607 events.

Is this because the deaths weren't reported, or because they're outside the area where the FDA is analyzing data? The article doesn't say.

And remember tampon-associated toxic shock syndrome? Remember how much trouble everybody went to, making sure women knew risks and prevention and so forth? How tampon manufacturing and marketing and labeling were changed? Why are tampon users entitled to more and better information than women considering abortion?

In addition to the five toxic shock deaths, a woman in Tennessee died from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy after taking the abortion drug, a Swedish teen died from a massive hemorrhage, and a woman in the U.K. died for unclear reasons.

And how many more deaths have gone unreported?

A total of 237 cases of hemorrhage were reported, with one resulting in death, 68 requiring transfusions, and 42 characterized as life-threatening.

That's 68 women that we know of subjected to the risks of transfusions, including possibly fatal hepatitis.

Seventeen of the adverse events involved ectopic pregnancies that were not discovered until after the women had taken the abortion drug; eleven involved ruptures and one resulted in death.

This is just plain sloppiness, again. There's no excuse for an abortion facility to fail to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy. They're supposed to be doing an ultrasound and an examination to verify the location of the embryo before proceeding. Even a jury of abortionists would call this malpractice! But a jury of abortion lobbyists wouldn't, I suppose.

Researcher Margaret M. Gary, MD, tells WebMD that she believes the adverse reactions reported to the FDA make up only a fraction of the true medical events that actually occur among women who take the drug to induce abortions. .... "The FDA reports that only about 1 percent to 10 percent of adverse events for any given drug are ever reported," she says. "And in this case women may be even less likely to report problems because they may be ashamed."

How about the people dispensing the drugs in the first place are quacks!?

Another problem, [Dr. Gary] says, is that even when women seek treatment their medical problem may not be recognized as being related to use of the drug. Early symptoms of drug-related bacterial infection often include abdominal cramping, nausea and vomiting. These symptoms are common among women who take the abortion drug.

And the women might think it's just stress or the flu. NAF nurses once complained that they couldn't get patients to take their troublesome symptoms seriously after an abortion, possibly because it's been pounded into their heads that abortion is so safe that they can't bring themselves to believe anything really can go wrong. Not to mention how lousy so many abortion facilities are with aftercare. Even if the woman realizes something is wrong, like Brenda Vise did, the clinic may well tell her to just take an aspirin and go to bed.

I've said it before: Abortionists are, by and large, not the kind of people who can be trusted to provide adequate care even in situations where it's obvious what's wrong. These are people who stand around and do nothing while women go into cardiac arrest, who leave hemorrhaging women unattended, who ignore patient allergies and medical histories when injecting women with drugs. And we give them something as dangerous as these drugs and are surprised that they're killing their patients?