“Choice and Sacrifice: RU-486”
Dr. Ken Chase, October 2000

The evils in the world are plentiful enough, and we find no shortage of troubling decisions and actions. Yet the FDA's decision to approve RU-486, the abortifacient, stands as a dishonorable benchmark of U.S. culture. We cannot fault the FDA on this one, for they are acting within the law to approve a pill that accomplishes what women are legally entitled to do. The fault lies with a prominent cultural current in which we are eager to make it as easy as possible to sacrifice others for the sake of our own interests.

For many women, the choice to abort a fetus is not easy. Many struggle long and hard to make a good decision. They consider the future well-being of the child, of other family members, of themselves. In some instances, tragic circumstances demand a careful consideration of physical disabilities or personal health. Women also, hopefully, feel the enormous weight of taking a human life. The decision is sufficiently complex that moral reflection of the highest order is warranted. RU-486, though, seems to provide opportunity to reduce the medical decision to a simple pharmaceutical one: symptom, then relief, with merely a regimen of pills. If the drug works according to plan, it will serve to further separate a pregnant woman from the magnitude of an abortion decision.

Fortunately, the FDA requires medical counseling in conjunction with prescription. Also, many physicians will be reluctant to prescribe, believing the standard surgical procedure is more effective. Regardless, the promise of the drug is to make abortion easier, more convenient, less troublesome. In short, it promises a woman a less encumbered decision process.

It is an awesome decision to sacrifice one's life for the good of another. An even more weighty matter is to sacrifice another's life for the good of oneself. A society has a deep interest in strictly regulating this latter possibility. RU-486 mocks the society's interest, and subjects life itself to the potentially perverted logic of one's personal desires. This is a horror of the greatest magnitude.

Dr. Ken Chase
CACE Director

(October 2000)