Republican lawmakers plan to reintroduce a bill to suspend the sale of RU-486, the abortion pill, and probe the process surrounding its approval now that three U.S. deaths have been linked to the drug.
The measure would ban the drug temporarily while the Government Accountability Office, Congress' investigative arm, conducts a six-month independent review of the approval process the agency used to declare RU-486 "safe and effective" in 2000.
One of the bill's co-sponsors, Sen.-elect and Rep. Jim DeMint, South Carolina Republican, said questions remain about the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of RU-486, whose generic name is mifepristone, under a protocol reserved for drugs intended to treat life-threatening diseases.
That decision, he said, which came during the Clinton administration, was "thoroughly political, not scientific."
If the FDA is found to have violated its own rules, the abortion drug would be banned indefinitely, said Mr. DeMint. If not, the suspension would be lifted.
The bill was introduced in November 2003 after the death of Holly Patterson, 18, of Livermore, Calif. She died of a bacterial infection seven days after she took RU-486 to end an unplanned pregnancy that began when she was a minor.
The drug stops a fetus from growing and expels it in a manner similar to a miscarriage.
Chief sponsors of the bill, officially known as the RU-486 Suspension and Review Act, also include Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland Republican, and Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican.
"It's an unequivocal yes that we will reintroduce the bill," said Lisa Wright, Mr. Bartlett's press secretary, given that new safety warnings are being put on the drug after the deaths of three American women who took it.
On Tuesday, FDA officials confirmed that Miss Patterson and two other American women died after taking the drug. But they said they do not have evidence that RU-486 was responsible for the deaths.
