Chris Smith, Republican anti-choice obsessive in the House of Representatives, keeps flogging “Holly’s Law”, a bill to make RU-486 illegal, and named after Holly Patterson, a young woman who obtained a medical abortion and later died of septic shock. It was introduced last session, languished, and reappeared like a bad fungus. Her parents endorse the bill.

No one can say now, of course, but it occurs to me that one person who likely would not endorse the bill is Holly Patterson. She made a choice to use the medication after being informed of the known risks : that at most 6 (now 7) out of over half-a-million users of RU-486 had died afterwards, and that that rate compares with deaths from septicemia following childbirth or surgical abortion, and is actually lower than those from all causes associated with full-term pregnancy. Surely she did not hope for or expect the tragic consequences in her case, but it’s clear she thought, beforehand, that the existence a low level of risk was not reason enough to ban the drug. Almost certainly not agreeing with the proposed legislation would be the half-million women who used this medication safely and effectively. Those who wish to ban the drug seek to supplant every one of these women’s choices - and those of any of the millions of women every year for whom RU-486 is a potential treatment choice - with their commands, and to replace women’s decision-making with obedience to others’ authority. I suspect none of these women, and likely not Holly herself, would grant their informed consent to that prospect.

I don’t mean to put words in Holly Patterson’s or anyone else’s mouth. I dislike the use of women who have died following abortion - legal or illegal - as symbols of someone else’s cause. But I do wish to point out that the decision to use this medication is one that can easily be taken on rational and informed grounds, indeed it is in many cases the safest alternative a pregnant woman has, and that the women who have made that decision have acted intelligently and with knowledge beforehand in a rational defense of their own interests.

This bill, by banning one particular treatment that, even in the face of a number of recent deaths, has a lower mortality overall compared with any other alternative simply cannot rationally be an attempt to protect women from fatal complications in unwanted pregnancy. What it is is an attempt to capitalize on a number of adverse incidents deliberately publicized by anti-choice forces for just that purpose, in order to remove the most convenient abortion option from women’s grasp. It is an attempt to coerce women’s choices about unwanted pregnancy by eliminating one safe possible option. And I doubt any woman who values her autonomy and has confidence in her own ability to make her own choices would endorse the coercion of all women out of pretended sympathy.

Hat tip: Joseph Bryars at Abortion Watch.