python3 raw strings and \u escapes

[rurpy at yahoo.com]

In python2, "\u" escapes are processed in raw unicode
strings.  That is, ur'\u3000' is a string of length 1
consisting of the IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE unicode character.

In python3, "\u" escapes are not processed in raw strings.
r'\u3000' is a string of length 6 consisting of a backslash,
'u', '3' and three '0' characters.

This breaks a lot of my code because in python 2
      re.split (ur'[\u3000]', u'A\u3000A') ==> [u'A', u'A']
but in python 3 (the result of running 2to3),
      re.split (r'[\u3000]', 'A\u3000A' ) ==> ['A\u3000A']

I can remove the "r" prefix from the regex string but then
if I have other regex backslash symbols in it, I have to
double all the other backslashes -- the very thing that
the r-prefix was invented to avoid.

Or I can leave the "r" prefix and replace something like
r'[ \u3000]' with r'[ 　]'.  But that is confusing because
one can't distinguish between the space character and
the ideographic space character.  It also a problem if a
reader of the code doesn't have a font that can display
the character.

Was there a reason for dropping the lexical processing of
\u escapes in strings in python3 (other than to add another
annoyance in a long list of python3 annoyances?)

And is there no choice for me but to choose between the two
poor choices I mention above to deal with this problem?