There is little experience with, and virtually no documentation of, adolescents’ use of RU 486 as a means of terminating pregnancy. While this void is understandable presently, it must be filled in order to determine how best to apply this new medical method to a special population—teenagers. It is imperative to know how adolescents might react differently from older women physiologically and psychologically, how they would accept this method of abortion and how health service providers should respond to their special needs. Counseling, for example, is particularly important for adolescent use of any family planning or abortion service.

Although it is not possible to review directly adolescent experience with RU 486, it is instructive to examine related attitudinal and behavioral patterns to assess the potential for adolescent use of a medical method of abortion. Documented experience with contraception and surgical abortion underscores the major challenges—present and new—for adoption of a new approach.