Toomey expresses confidence in Senate victory

<b>First Posted:</b> 7/9/2009<br><br>By LINDA A. JOHNSON Associated Press Writer 



Roughly a fourth of American women getting early abortions last year did so with drugs rather than surgery, statistics show, as a new study reported improved safety in using the so-called &amp;ldquo;abortion pill.&amp;rdquo;
Some experts predict the percentage of such &amp;ldquo;medical abortions,&amp;rdquo; which offer more privacy than surgical termination at an abortion clinic or hospital, will rise even more due to the new study.
The research, done at Planned Parenthood clinics across the country, shows that a new way of giving pills to induce abortion virtually eliminated the risk for a rare but dangerous infection.
&amp;ldquo;This is the first really huge documentation of how safe and effective medical abortion is,&amp;rdquo; said Dr. Beverly Winikoff, a professor of family health and population at Columbia University. 
Two pills are used to induce an abortion. The primary drug, Mifeprex, was first approved in the U.S. in 2000. Use has risen steadily, even though manufacturer Danco Laboratories LLC of New York hasn&amp;rsquo;t promoted it and the drug can only be obtained at a clinic or doctor&amp;rsquo;s office, not through a pharmacy. 
Medical abortions now account for about a quarter of early abortions, according to company spokeswoman Abby Long. At Planned Parenthood, the biggest provider of medical abortions, they amount to 32 percent of early terminations.
The group&amp;rsquo;s study analyzed medical abortions at Planned Parenthood centers between 2005 and mid-2008 &amp;mdash; about 228,000 cases. It found the abortion pill was about 98.5 percent effective and that changes in how the drugs were given reduced risk of a serious infection from barely 1 in 1,000 cases to 0.06 in 1,000.
The results are reported in  today&amp;rsquo;s New England Journal of Medicine.
Chris Gacek, a senior fellow at the anti-abortion Family Research Council, said he wasn&amp;rsquo;t surprised by the increasing use of Mifeprex.
&amp;ldquo;I don&amp;rsquo;t think at this point we&amp;rsquo;re going to do anything&amp;rdquo; to try to limit its use, he said. &amp;ldquo;It&amp;rsquo;s hard to know whether this increases the (total) number of abortions.&amp;rdquo;

Pills used in quarter of U.S. abortions