KFF HEALTH NEWS – Louisiana lawmakers have added two drugs commonly used in pregnancy and reproductive health care to the state’s list of controlled dangerous substances, a move that has alarmed doctors in the state.
Mifepristone and misoprostol have many clinical uses, and one use approved by the FDA is to take the pills to induce an abortion at up to 10 weeks of gestation.
The bill that moved through the Louisiana Legislature this spring lists both medications as Schedule IV drugs under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law, creating penalties of up to 10 years in prison for anyone caught with the drugs without a valid prescription. Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed the bill into law in May. It takes effect Oct. 1.
The new law is the latest move by anti-abortion advocates trying to control access to abortion medications in states with near-total abortion bans, such as Louisiana. The law is the first of its kind, opening a new front in the state-by-state battle over reproductive medicine.
Republican-controlled states have passed various laws regulating medication abortion in the past, said Daniel Grossman, an OB-GYN and a reproductive health researcher at the University of California-San Francisco.
“Compared to women who carried their babies to term, women who obtained abortions were 35% more likely to commit suicide.” – NEBRASKA FAMILY ALLIANCE
But after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision in 2022, in which the Supreme Court ruled there was no constitutional right to an abortion, scrutiny of medication abortions escalated as clinics in certain states shuttered completely or were required to stop offering in-clinic procedures.
“It’s not surprising that states are trying everything they can to try to restrict these drugs,” Grossman said. “But this is certainly a novel approach.”
Before the Louisiana bill passed, more than 250 OB-GYNs and emergency, internal medicine, and other physicians from across the state signed a letter to the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Thomas Pressly, a Republican, arguing the move could threaten women’s health by delaying lifesaving care.
“It’s just really jaw-dropping,” said Nicole Freehill, a New Orleans OB-GYN who signed the letter. “Almost a day doesn’t go by that I don’t utilize one or both of these medications.”
Mifepristone and misoprostol are routinely used to treat miscarriages, stop obstetric hemorrhaging, induce labor, or prepare the cervix for a range of procedures inside the uterus, such as inserting an IUD or taking a biopsy of the uterine lining …
Criminalizing Support for Abortions
Louisiana’s abortion ban already makes it a crime to provide an abortion, including by giving someone medications used to induce abortion. And a 2022 law added up to 50 years in prison for mailing mifepristone or misoprostol.
Because the new law explicitly exempts pregnant women, opponents like Elizabeth Ling believe it is meant to isolate those women from others who would help them. Ling, a reproductive rights attorney at If/When/How, is particularly concerned about the prison penalties, which she believes are intended to frighten and disrupt underground networks of support for patients seeking the pills.
Pregnant patients might worry about ordering online or enlisting a friend to help obtain the pills: “Is my friend who is simply just providing me emotional support going to somehow, you know, be punished for doing that?” Ling said.
Ling added that there’s concern that the law could also be used to target people who aren’t pregnant but who want to order abortion pills online and stock them in case of a future pregnancy. That practice has become increasingly popular in states with abortion bans.
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ABORTIONIST LIES: THE KNOWN DANGERS OF ABORTION
Nebraska Family Alliance – A 2011 article published in the British Journal of Psychiatry reviewed 22 major studies between 1995 and 2009 that examined the psychological effects of abortion on women. The results of the survey were alarming. Compared to women who carried their babies to term, women who obtained abortions were:
- 81% increased risk for mental health problems, 10 percent of which is directly attributable to the abortion.
- 27% more likely to use marijuana.
- 21% more likely to display suicidal behaviors.
- 35% more likely to commit suicide.
Despite the obvious risks and harms of abortion, those who support abortion on-demand still claim that abortion is safer than carrying a pregnancy to term. A study released in 2012 was touted as supporting this often-repeated statement.
However, a closer look at the methodology and information used in the study, and also who was behind the study, reveals it is completely misleading and speculation at best.
