Étienne-Émile Baulieu, Father of the Abortion Pill, Is Dead at 98
Étienne-Émile Baulieu, the French biochemist and physician who was often called the father of the abortion pill — and who was also known for his pioneering studies on the role of steroid hormones in human reproduction and aging — died on Friday at his home in Paris. He was 98.
His wife, Simone Harari Baulieu, confirmed the death on social media.
Dr. Baulieu's early research focused on hormones, notably DHEA, one of the key hormones in the adrenal gland, as well as groundbreaking work on estrogen and progesterone. But it was his development in the early 1980s of the synthetic steroid RU-486, or mifepristone, that thrust him onto the public stage.
Unlike the morning-after pill, which is used after sex to delay ovulation, RU-486 works as a kind of 'anti-hormone,' in Dr. Baulieu's words, by blocking the uterus from receiving progesterone, thereby preventing a fertilized egg from implanting.
Taking the drug with misoprostol, a drug that causes uterine contractions, essentially triggers a miscarriage, enabling women to terminate early pregnancies without surgery.
The two-dose treatment has been proved safe and highly effective — with a success rate of about 95 percent — and is commonly used in many countries; in the United States, medication abortions accounted for more than 50 percent of all abortions in 2020. After the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, demand for the pills surged, and abortion opponents began seeking ways to ban the drug nationwide.
Controversy over RU-486 began as soon as its release in the 1980s. Dr. Baulieu developed the drug in partnership with the French drug company Roussel-Uclaf, where he was an independent consultant.
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