Leah: Hi! My name is Leah from Indianapolis, Indiana and I am 20 years old. I am interested in learning more about the abortion pill RU486. I want to know what the risks are and how it works?
Dyan Aretakis: Leah, RU486 was the name that this procedure was given when it was still in the investigational stage in the United States. This approach called Medical Abortion meaning that you take a medication as oppose to a surgical approach has been used in other countries since the 1980s, but it was approved in the United States in the year 2000.
There are three steps. The first step is taking the first medication which is Mifepristone and that blocks the hormone activity of progesterone and progesterone is necessary to maintain a pregnancy. It has to be started within 63 days of the first day of your period. So it's an early approach for an abortion technique.
You take this medication usually in the office of the physician who is prescribing it. And then two days later you take a second drug, usually Misoprostol, but there are some other drugs that might be used. The second drug actually causes the bleeding and cramping which leads to the abortion that can happen within a few hours, or within one or two days and that would generally happen when you are at home.
The third step in the procedure is when you come back in two weeks later and the physician determines whether or not this approach worked. There is a 3% chance that it will not work. So he or she will determine if you are still pregnant, or if there is any tissue left.
Some of the risk associated with doing a medical abortion is that if it doesn't work you may end up having to have a surgical abortion as well, or there might be problems like some bleeding cramping, or maybe even a mild infection.
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