May 17, 2006 — twelve days after her 18th birthday, holly patterson went to a planned parenthood in california and was prescribed ru-486.

Seven days later, she was in the emergency room, barely conscious and struggling to breathe. Hours later, she was dead.

Her father, monty patterson, who blames her death on ru-486, is expected to testify today on capitol hill in a hearing on what's called "the medical abortion pill."

"our message out there to everyone is that we wouldn't want to have, see anybody have to go through what we have had to go through here. In such a short period of time, our daughter was with us and the next day she's gone," patterson said.

Ru-486, also known as mifeprex or mifepristone, is a two-pill process. The first pill stops the womb from building up the necessary hormones in preparation for pregnancy. The second pill, taken two days or three days later, causes the uterus to contract and expel the fetus.

Rep. Mark edward souder, r-ind., who chairs the house government reform subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy and human resources, organized the hearing. He is an anti-abortion activist and christian conservative opposed to ru-486.

Souder, a co-sponsor of a bill called holly's law — named after patterson — which would ban the drug, says the goal of the hearing is not to take the drug off the market but instead to examine the health problems associated with it.

Five women, including patterson, have died from a bacterial infection after taking ru-486. Roughly 12 other women have contracted the same infection, without having taken ru-486, meaning you can't necessarily blame ru-486, some say.

"if we care about women's health — and I do — we really need to address this infection in a concrete and real way," said susan wood, a former assistant commissioner of the fda. "and taking ru-486 off the market will not realistically reduce the risk of women being infected with this bug."

an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 women have used ru-486 since it was approved in 2000. There are nine known deaths, which many doctors say is a solid safety record. However, critics, including patterson and some in the medical community, point out that aside from the handful of deaths associated with ru-486, there have been hundreds of hospitalizations.

Serious complications from surgical abortions are rare, according to the national abortion federation, an association of abortion providers in the united states and canada. About 88 percent of women who obtain abortions are less than 13 weeks pregnant. Of those, 97 percent report no complications; 2.5 percent have minor complications that can be handled at the facility; and fewer than 0.5 percent have more serious complications