ENVISIONING AN IDEAL ABORTIFACIENT: WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
Before discussing promising avenues of research on new abortifacients, meeting participants explored together the different properties that an “ideal” abortion method might possess. The group suggested the following characteristics: 1) High Efficacy. While there will never be an ongoing pregnancy rate of 0%, a rate of < 1% could be considered ideal. This was felt to be important in order to minimize the potential for teratogenic effects associated with large doses of prostaglandins during pregnancy. Furthermore, a high ongoing pregnancy rate would have important implications for health services, given the need for careful follow-up of women who had been treated. In the U.S., where many clinics have a very low ongoing pregnancy rate (reportedly around 0.5%), service delivery is actually designed as though there were a 2-4% ongoing rate. This inevitably requires greater resources and could pose practical problems in low-resource settings. 2) Single dose regimen. Administering mifepriston
