Although a FDA spokesman said "[We are] not aware of any evidence to suggest the issue that occurred at the leukemia drug facility is linked in any way with the facility that manufactures the mifepristone", Shanghai Hualian doesn't exactly have the greatest recrod: In 2002, shipments from the company were stopped at the U.S. border because they were unapproved or mislabeled, and pharmaceutical behemoth Pfizer won't import from Hualian at all because of its concerns with quality issues.

What is currently unclear and mildly troubling is why all the mifepristone in the United States is manufactured by a single company at a single factory in a country with a checkered history of drug regulation. Instances of bribery in the Chinese drug industry are so extreme that the top drug safety official was executed last year because he had accepted money to approve drugs. In addition, the same inspector responsible for the factory producing the tainted cancer drug, Gu Yaoming, met with F.D.A. brass in conjunction with the RU-486 factory inspection, all of which makes Tuesday's news that the FDA is the equivalent of 13 years behind in inspecting foreign drug manufacturers all the more inspiring!

Finally we have to wonder whether this news will affect the number of non-surgical abortions in the United States. Since RU-486 was introduced in 2000, the percentage of abortions performed through the pill has risen steadily, and at this point 14% of all abortions are "miffy" induced. Does this new information make you wary of taking RU?

Tainted Drugs Linked to Maker of Abortion Pill [New York Times]
Related: For F.D.A., A Major Backlog Overseas [NY Times]

Earlier: Experts Don't Understand Why Fewer American Women Are Getting Abortions

Uh, right. The harsh reality, however, is that if access to abortion is further imperiled, the women who will truly suffer are the poor, not teens from Philadelphia suburbs with median incomes of $90,000. And although this is not a new revelation, several women have published specific anecdotes underscoring that point. Activist and Radcliffe fellow Kissling also writing in Salon, tells the story of Rosie Jimenez, a woman who died from a back-alley abortion in 1978 because Medicaid funds for abortions had been cut off. The botched abortion had caused an "infection that had turned her skin a dark greenish brown and caused blood to seep from her eyes." Rural women are affected deeply, too. Erica Sackin relates a story about a friend who " had to drive 15 hours and two states out of small-town Texas to an abortion clinic — a clinic that has since closed." Here at Jezebel we shared own stories of abortion, and asked you to share your own, in the hopes of lessening the stigma attached.

The message to be gleaned from today's anniversary is that the fight for our reproductive rights is not something that languishes in the distant past. It's a battle being waged every day by embattled abortion providers in Albuquerque who will only speak anonymously to the Washington Post about "Miffy" or mifepristone, the abortion pill, for fear of local retribution. An abortion ban is such a feasible reality that the NARAL pro-choice organization has developed a map showing which states are likely to outlaw abortion if given a chance to. (What would happen in your state?) On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and, in an election year with several geriatric Supreme Court judges on the verge of retirement, the least we can do today is remember that our reproductive rights aren't something to be taken for granted.

Abortion's Battle Of Messages [Los Angeles Times]
Anti-abortion Cause Stirs New Generation [Los Angeles Times]
Voices: A Real Anniversary Present [Metro]
Roe, 35 Years Later [Salon]
As Abortion Rates Drop, Use of RU-486 Is On Rise [Washington Post]
Map [NARAL]

Earlier: Unlike Alveda King, I Am Neither "Reformed" Nor A Murderer
Experts Don't Understand Why Fewer American Women Are Getting Abortions