The Coming Abortion Revolution

“Could the decades-long global impasse over abortion worldwide be overcome—by little white pills costing less than $1 each?” Nicholas Kristof reports on a gynecological revolution: “Researchers are finding an alternative [to complicated abortions] that is safe, cheap and very difficult for governments to restrict—misoprostol, a medication originally intended to prevent stomach ulcers. ‘I feel like people must have felt when they discovered the nuclear bomb,’ says Dr. Beverly Winikoff, president of Gynuity Health Projects, a nonprofit research institution on reproductive health. ‘This technology is world-shaking.’ … Misoprostol is likely to become even more widely available, because last year the World Health Organization expanded its uses as an “essential medicine” to include treatment of miscarriages and incomplete abortions.”