A little less than a year ago, the Food and Drug Administration eased restrictions on use of the drug, reduced the dosage, extended use of it from the seventh to the tenth week of pregnancy, and loosened qualifications for prescribers. Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon with National Right to Life tells OneNewsNow a group of medical professionals wants restrictions further reduced.

“They’ve got a group of folks together who signed this article in the New England Journal of Medicine arguing that they want it to be able to be sold at retail pharmacies or be available through online mail order instead of having to go through procedures that are there for the safety of women,” he says.

The group of doctors call themselves the Mifeprex REMS Study Group – and according to the NRLC spokesman, there’s nothing in their arguments dealing with making the abortion drug safer for women.

The problem for the study group, O’Bannon adds, is that relatively few doctors are willing to terminate the lives of preborn babies – and that is why that group hopes to make it more easily available without a doctor’s prescription.

“Are these doctors [who signed the article] going to tell them about the 19 women who have taken these drugs and died?” O’Bannon asks. “Are they going to tell them about the thousands who end up hospitalized with ruptured ectopic pregnancies or with hemorrhaging?”

He also finds it “very interesting” that those who signed onto the article aren’t just a random group of doctors. “These are sort of like academic abortion all-stars,” he explains.

O’Bannon says the article’s premise is best described as “a recipe for disaster.”

NRLC says killing an unborn baby whose heart has already begun to beat is “the only purpose for which the sponsor [of RU486] ever sought U.S. government approval.”