U.S.

Group Plans RU-486 Ad Blitz

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

May 23, 2001 / 10:06 PM EDT / CBS

A national association of abortion providers is launching a magazine advertising campaign for RU-486, or mifepristone, the abortion pill treatment that received approval last fall from the Food and Drug Administration.

The ad campaign, which will run in more than a dozen magazines over the summer, was announced Wednesday by the National Abortion Federation, a professional group that represents some 400 abortion providers throughout the country.

Vicki Saporta, the group's executive director, said the $2 million ad campaign was paid for entirely by contributions from private groups such as the David and Lucille Packard Foundation. She said that Danco Laboratories, the privately held New York company that is marketing RU-486, had no role in the campaign.

Saporta said the group had been getting a large volume of inquiries about the drug on its hotline, which provides information on abortion options. "It was clear that women needed more information and we wanted to make sure they got it," Saporta said.

The ads will begin appearing in July in People and Self magazines, and in 11 other magazines through the end of the summer, including Glamour, Mademoiselle, and Marie Claire.

Only Redbook, a women's magazine published by Hearst Corp., declined to carry the ads, Saporta said.

Hearst spokesman Paul Luthringer declined to comment on Redbook's decision. Cosmopolitan, which is also owned by Hearst, will carry the ads.

"Redbook enjoys the same rights as other magazines to carry or turn down advertising in its pages, depending on whether the publisher feels it is appropriate for the reader," Luthringer said. "The decision is an individual one."

The pill's journey to the United States began in 1995, when French manufacturer Roussel-Uclaf turned over U.S. rights to the drug to the nonprofit Population Council of New York. The council began clinical trials needed for FDA approval and created Danco Laboratories to market mifepristone.

The FDA's approval last September was hailed by abortion rights groups as a way to allow women easier access to abortions by getting the treatment from their own doctors instead of having to visit an abortion clinic.

Dr. Deborah Oyer of Aurora Medical Services, a doctor who was involved in the clinical trials, predicted that eventually, about 10 percent of the 1.3 abortions done each year in the United States will be done chemically.

But the treatment has continued to stir up controversy. Many colleges have rejected using RU-486, and anti-abortion groups strongly oppose it.