Louisiana's governor signed a law last night that made his state the first in the US to regulate two abortion-inducing drugs. The list of controlled substances usually includes drugs that can lead to abuse or addiction, notes Reuters, quoted by BTA.
The measure was signed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry a day after the state legislature sent it to his desk.
The bill was passed by a large majority of Republicans in the Louisiana House and Senate as efforts by the US Food and Drug Administration to expand access to abortion pills face a legal challenge before the Supreme Court. The new law designates mifepristone and misoprostol, which the administration approved more than two decades ago as safe and effective for terminating pregnancies, as Schedule 4 drugs, which typically include pain relievers and mood-altering drugs that deserve greater oversight because of the potential for abuse or dependence. This puts Louisiana abortion pills in the same category as anti-anxiety drugs like Xanax and Valium, even though neither mifepristone nor misoprostol are considered by the medical community to be addictive.
The reclassification makes it riskier for residents of Louisiana, which already has a near-total ban on surgical and medical abortions, to obtain the pills from outside the state or order them online without a prescription. Critics say the measure will also make it harder for patients to get the drugs when they are prescribed for other purposes, such as inducing labor, treating miscarriages and reducing the risk of serious ulcer bleeding.
Doctors would need a special license to prescribe the drugs, and prescriptions would be entered into a state database that law enforcement could access without a court order.
Critics argue that this situation could threaten patients' privacy and expose doctors to unwarranted scrutiny.
The two pills, taken together as a two-part regimen, allow women to terminate pregnancies at home and are currently used in over 60% of all abortions in the US. The bill would make possession without a prescription a felony, punishable by one to five years in prison and fines of up to $5,000.
Although pregnant women are expressly exempted from punishment for violating the measure, any other person who might help them obtain the drugs could be held liable. Women who buy the pills as a precaution also face prosecution.
The drug reclassification was added as an amendment to a bill that outlaws "forced abortion by fraud" by making it a crime to administer abortion-inducing drugs to an unsuspecting pregnant woman without her consent. The measure's lead sponsor, Sen. Thomas Pressley, named the bill after his sister, whose then-husband had spiked her drinks with abortion drugs he obtained from Mexico, causing her serious health problems. She later divorced him, and he was convicted of domestic violence and served 180 days in jail.
Abortion rights groups denounced the bill as part of a broader Republican effort to criminalize abortion after a conservative majority on the Supreme Court in 2022 overturned the landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade", which made access to abortion a constitutional right throughout the United States.
"This is a scary time for women across America," Biden said in a statement Thursday after the Louisiana Senate passed the abortion pill measure. "If Donald Trump regains power, he will try to make what is happening in states like Louisiana a reality across the country," the US president emphasized.