The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) did not represent the teaching of Christian faith when it issued a statement hailing the approval of RU-486 for sale in the United States as "a moral victory." If the availability of drug-induced abortion is in any sense a victory, it is a victory for immorality.

News reports announcing the approval of the "abortion pill" by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) typically fail to mention that the intended effect of the first set of pills is to kill the live human being developing in the womb by blocking the hormone progesterone, which is essential to the growth of the embryo. The second visit to the clinic is to take a pill designed to start contractions to expel the dead child.

Concerns for the effect of the drug on the women who take it are well placed because of the drug's side effects. However, morality is far more attached to the hidden and unspoken reality of the tiny human being already developing in the womb of its mother. John Calvin, half a millennium ago, commented that killing a person at home was more horrible than a killing in the street because our homes are our most secure place of refuge. Therefore, he said, it ought to seem more "atrocious" to us to "destroy the unborn in the womb before it has come to light." Because the womb is intended to be the refuge for those who cannot yet survive the world beyond the birth canal, it is "monstrous," said Calvin, deliberately to destroy that life.

The availability of drug-induced abortion also serves as an encouragement to sexual sin, luring men and women into a false sense that sex outside the bonds of marriage can be without consequence. These sins are too often linked--sexual sin and the sin of destroying innocent human life.

RU-486 is no victory. We in Presbyterians Pro-Life grieve its availability, as if abortion were not plentiful enough in our country when more than a million of our unborn children die from it every year. We want women to know that Christians all over our country stand ready to help see them through a difficult pregnancy. Those who are unmarried and unable to raise a child will find couples all over our country eagerly hoping for a baby to adopt. And we want women and men who have been affected by abortion decisions to know that there are Presbyterian churches that will welcome them into their midst and minister the love and grace of Jesus Christ to them.