The governor of Louisiana signed a bill on Friday that would make his condition the first in the country to identify two abortion-inducing medications as controlled substances, a group that healthcare regulators normally reserve for drugs susceptible to abuse or habit.
The legislation, which is reversing Republican-led efforts to ban abortion in a presidential election time, was signed into law by Republican Governor Jeff Landry the day after the state government sent it to his office.
Yet as efforts by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to increase access to contraception pills are bringing up a legal challenge before the Supreme Court, the bill passed the Republican-majority House of Representatives and Senate in Louisiana by a sizable margin.
The new legislation classifies mifepristone and misoprostol as Schedule IV medicines, meaning they merit more monitoring because of the potential for abuse or dependence. The FDA approved them more than 20 years ago as safe and effective for terminating pregnancy.
The abortion pills in Louisiana are classified similarly to the anti-anxiety drugs Xanax and Valium, but neither mifepristone nor misoprostol are deemed by the medical establishment to be a risk of compassion or habit.
The classification makes it more difficult for Louisiana citizens to buy the pills from out of position or purchase them online without a prescription, which is already nearly a complete ban on clinical and medication-induced abortions.
The determine, according to critics, will also make it more difficult for patients to obtain the medications when they are prescribed for purposes other than facilitating labor during childbirth, preventing miscarriages, and lowering the risk of severe bleeding from ulcers.
Doctors may have a unique license to write the treatments, and those prescriptions are compiled into a position collection that law enforcement can access without a permit. Critics claim that this circumstance may impair patient privacy and expose doctors to unnecessary investigation.
According to Kirsten Moore, the organization’s director,” People who entry this medication have more blame, conflict, and misunderstandings,” adding that the overall goal is to “put mifepristone and misoprostol again under lock and key.”
The drug’s unprescribed possession is now a crime punishable by one to five years in prison and fines of up to$ 5, 000.
Although pregnant women are explicitly excluded from punishment for infraction of the estimate, any other person who may help them get the drugs, such as friends, family members or healthcare providers, may be subject to prosecution.
People who are not pregnant but do have the pills on hands as a protection are also not exempt.
A bill that makes it illegal to” coerced criminal abortion by means of fraud” be amended to include the medicine classification, making it illegal to give an unwary pregnant female her consent without her knowledge.
Supporters claim that the larger bill’s larger goal is to stop the circulation of mifepristone and misoprostol for illegal purposes, such as coerced medication abortions, by putting more governmental control over their distribution.
The measure’s general sponsor, Senator Thomas Pressly, named the bill for his sister whose therefore- husband slipped abortion drugs he obtained from Mexico into her drinks, causing her severe health effects and causing the excessive birth of her daughter, who survived. The husband, whom she divorced, was later convicted in a domestic violence case and sentenced to 180 days in jail.
Since the Supreme Court’s conservative majority in 2022 overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which made access to abortion a constitutional right on the entire country, abortion rights groups have decried the bill as part of a larger Republican-driven effort to criminalize abortion.
Following that reverse, individual states were free to regulate abortion as they saw fit, largely.
In a case challenging FDA regulations that made it easier to prescribe mifepristone via telemedicine and mail delivery, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in March. The justices appeared hesitant to take sides with pro-choice groups on the issue in their questioning.
