A new clinic in a Washington suburb that offers a spa-type setting for women seeking an abortion using RU-486 seems to be telling women “that abortion is not complicated at all”, a pro-life group has said.
“A woman wants one. A woman (or a girl) gets one. She moves on – and woe be to anyone who dares to disagree that having an abortion is essentially indistinguishable from a quick trip to the spa for a pedicure,” wrote Dave Andrusko, news editor at the National Right to Life.
He made the comments about a clinic called Carafem that opened last month just outside of Washington in Chevy Chase. According to the Washington Post, its owners have created “‘spa-like’ experience for women with a very open and unabashed approach to pregnancy termination”.
Carafem’s website says it specialises in first-trimester abortions, up to about 10 weeks of pregnancy, using only the RU-486 medical abortion procedure. It charges $400 for the procedure, about $100 less than the average cost of a surgical abortion. The staff will “greet clients with warm teas, comfortable robes and a matter-of-fact attitude”, the Post story said.
Carol Tobias, National Right to Life’s president, said in a statement that “abortion is not pleasant” and trying to “to put pretty wrappings around the procedure isn’t going to make any difference”.
RU-486 is a two-day regimen used to terminate early pregnancies by blocking the hormone progesterone needed to sustain a pregnancy. It involves two types of medication – RU-486 itself, which is mifepristone, and a prostaglandin, known as misoprostol, that stimulates uterine contractions, and taken two days later to expel the foetus.
Carafem staff will administer the first medication at the clinic to the client, who then will take the second part at home within a 72-hour period. If the Maryland clinic is successful, Carafem’s president, Christopher Purdy, told the Post he hoped to expand to other states.
In his commentary, Mr Andrusko called Carafem “the latest extension of the hey-abortion-is-no-big-deal mantra”.
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