Action Alert: Urge FDA Approval of Mifepristone

[Guest guest]

Over 50,000 American women have hysterectomies each year. The

leading cause of a hysterectomy is fibroid tumors. There’s a drug

out there that may help shrink fibroids and possibly help prevent so many

women from undergoing such invasive, life-changing surgery. This

drug is called mifepristone, formerly known as RU-486. Some of you

may know mifepristone as the “abortion pill,” but you may not be aware

that there are so many more possible medical breakthroughs associated

with this drug.

Mifepristone may be approved in September 2000, but the FDA is currently

discussing restrictions on the drug's distribution that may severely

limit women's access to it. The FDA is reportedly considering onerous and

medically unnecessary restrictions that could drastically limit its

distribution, possibly even threaten the safety of physicians, and

ultimately derail the development of the drug's non-abortion indications

such as ovarian cancer, uterine fibroid tumors, meningioma (brain

tumors), and endometriosis.

Mifepristone, which has been used by millions of women throughout the

majority of the European Union as well as China, Israel, Switzerland and

other parts of the world, is a safe and effective method of early

abortion that would be a historic milestone for women's health care. In

1996, the FDA already determined that mifepristone is safe and

effective. Why are American women still waiting for it today?

To learn more about this issue and how to support FDA approval of

mifepristone without restrictions, TAKE ACTION

NOW to help further medical advances for women:

www.feminist.org/action/1_action.html

Send this to all your friends and together we can urge the FDA to make

this drug widely available.