Private RU-486 Confounds Anti-Abortionists: Who Can We Harass Now?

Don't look now, but the front lines of the abortion battle are shifting. Thanks to advances in medical technology and the introduction of the drug mifepristone (aka RU 486), which gives women the option of having safe, early abortions in private locations instead of public clinics, the raving crazies who tape pictures of bloody fetuses to their bodies, stalk Planned Parenthood and howl "murder" at anyone who walks through its doors, may suddenly find themselves all dressed up with nowhere to go -- and no one to terrorize.

Or, at the very least, if this mob of screeching would-be fetus rescuers wants to continue its brand of guerrilla warfare -- a decades-long face-down with abortion providers who have accepted the possibility that they'd be blown up at their desks or taken out by a sniper while sitting at their dinner tables as just another part of the job -- its self-righteous, lunatic members will have to work a lot harder.

It's about time. Because, judging from the religious right's30-year campaign of violence against U.S. and Canadian medical clinics, I'd say murder in the name of God hasn't been too difficult. Here's a look at domestic terrorism by the numbers:

• 7 murders, including 3 doctors, 2 clinic employees, a security guard, and an escort
• 17 attempted murders
• 383 death threats
• 153 incidents of assault and battery
• 3 kidnappings
• 41 bombings
• 173 arsons
• 91 attempted bombings or arsons
• 619 bomb threats
• 655 bioterror attacks (all hoaxes), 554 of which were committed by one man
• 1,630 incidents of trespassing
• 1,264 incidents of vandalism
• 100 attacks with butyric acid stink bombs

One-third of all abortion clinics in 1981 were gone by 2005.

If Islamic Jihadists had done even a tenth this much damage, every last Muslim in America would be doing stress-position calisthenics in a concentration camp somewhere in the Nevada desert right now. But since this impressive achievement in domestic terrorism was almost entirely accomplished by white Christian men -- well, y'see, it's Not Terrorism when we do it -- the public has barely batted an eye.

In fact, while most of the country was looking the other way, that's when the supply lines for abortion shifted. According to a recent article in the Washington Post, that change -- RU-486 -- is starting to make a fundamental difference in the way abortion happens -- and is talked about -- in this country.

According to the Post's Rob Stein:

At a time when the overall number of abortions has been steadily declining, a new survey reported that RU-486-induced abortions have been rising by 22 percent a year and now account for 14 percent of the total -- and more than 1 in 5 of early abortions performed by the ninth week of pregnancy.

It's not the actual numbers that are interesting here; it's the trendline. RU-486 has been available in the United States since 2000, and its use has been increasing at a slow but steady rate ever since. What's new is that it's finally approaching critical mass, gaining acceptance with the vast numbers of doctors who've wanted to offer their patients the option of a safe early abortion, but simply couldn't take on the daunting social, financial or physical risks of performing the operation themselves. Increasingly, year by year, RU-486 has allowed more and more of these doctors and their patients to do a complete end-run around the crazies at the clinic door. And this has gone on long enough now that it's starting to change the way we approach the whole issue, on several fronts.

First, it's already putting more abortion providers back in service. For 20 years, the number of doctors and clinics offering abortion was in free fall: Every year, it seemed, more of them succumbed to anti-choice harassment and pressure, and closed their doors. Old doctors retired; young ones were discouraged from learning the procedure; clinic directors balked at the PR and security problems and the insurance premiums. But, according to the Guttmacher Institute, the rate of decline suddenly flattened from 8 percent to 2 percent in 2001, as doctors started adding RU-486 to their practices -- and that rate has held steady ever since. We're still losing abortion providers, but most of those losses are being offset by the growing number of doctors offering drug-induced medical abortion. Even better news: Those doctors are now everywhere, including states where the last surgical abortion provider was run out years ago.