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Antiprogestin Drugs: Ethical Issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

Ruth Macklin
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Extract

Does the prospect of introducing RU 486 into the United States pose any unique ethical issues? Or are the ethical questions raised by antiprogestins similar to those that arise when any new medical technology comes along? The short answer is that the ethical issues are not new or different, but the politics of abortion can seduce us into thinking that antiprogestins bear ethical hazards of a novel sort.

One transcending ethical question stands before us: Would it be the right thing to do to introduce RU 486 into the United States today? The deceptive simplicity of that question requires further analysis.

Type
Ethical and Legal Issues
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Fall 1992 , pp. 215 - 219
Copyright
© 1992 American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics

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References

Gervais, Karen and Miles, Steven, “RU 486: New Issues in the American Abortion Debate”, unpublished report from the Center For Biomedical Ethics, University of Minnesota (1990), 9, citing Urquhart, D.R. and Templeton, A.A., “Acceptability of Medical Pregnancy Termination”, Lancet, 2 (July 1988): 106.Google Scholar
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