244 Family Planning Perspectives In 1996, as well, the Food and Drug Ad-

ministration (FDA) took significant steps toward approving the use of medical (non-surgical) abortion in the United States, es-sentially by “preapproving ” the use of mifepristone, popularly known as RU 486, as an abortifacient; final approval is pend-ing information on manufacturing and la-beling. In addition, FDA cleared the way for clinical study by U.S. health care providers of a combination of two other drugs— methotrexate and misoprostol—used to in-duce early nonsurgical abortions. While it remains to be seen to what ex-tent the advent of medical (nonsurgical) abortions will actually change the provi-sion of abortion services in the United States, it is at least possible that such abor-tions will be administered by health care providers who, for whatever reasons, have been reluctant to provide surgical abortions. If new providers do indeed emerge, incorporating abortion reporting by these providers into current reporting procedures will be critical both to mea-suring the number of abortions provided in the United States, and to monitoring the drugs ’ use and safety. Furthermore, be-cause medical abortion is used primarily in the first seven weeks of pregnancy, the provision of nonsurgical abortion may lead to a shift in the timing of abortions. Documenting this shift might prove im-portant to the abortion debate, since many individuals support early abortion but grow increasingly uncomfortable with the procedure as the pregnancy continues. The Centers for Disease Control and Pre-vention (CDC), the government agency cur-rently responsible for compiling U.S. abor-tion data, has been criticized by some people for its inability to answer all abor-tion-related inquiries—particularly, detailed questions relating to late-term abortions. However, such criticism does not consider that—in keeping with vital statistics tradi-tion—CDC obtains its data through a vol