NEW ORLEANS — First-of-its-kind legislation classifying two abortion-inducing drugs as controlled, dangerous substances was signed into law Friday by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry.
The Republican governor announced the bill’s signing in Baton Rouge a day after it won final legislative approval in the state Senate.
The measure affects the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol, used in medical abortions, the most common abortion method in the US.
Opponents of the bill included many doctors who said the drugs have other critical reproductive health uses and that changing the classification could make it more difficult to prescribe the drugs.
Supporters of the bill said it would protect pregnant women from forced abortions, although they cited just one example of this, in the state of Texas.
The bill passed as abortion opponents await a final ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on an effort to restrict access to mifepristone.
The new law will come into force on October 1st.
The bill began as a measure to create the crime of “criminal coerced abortion through fraud.” An amendment adding abortion drugs to schedule IV of the Louisiana Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Act was promoted by Sen. Thomas Pressly, a Republican from Shreveport and the bill’s lead sponsor.
“Requiring that an abortion-inducing medication be obtained with a prescription and criminalizing the use of an abortion medication by an innocent mother is nothing short of common sense,” Landry said in a statement.
Current Louisiana law already requires a prescription for both medications and makes their use to induce an abortion a crime in most cases. The bill would make it more difficult to obtain the pills. Other Schedule IV medications include the opioid tramadol and a group of depressants known as benzodiazepines.
Knowingly possessing the drugs without a valid prescription would attract punishment including heavy fines and prison time. The bill’s language appears to create protections for pregnant women who obtain the medication without a prescription for their own consumption.
The classification would require doctors to have a specific license to prescribe the medications, and the medications would have to be stored in certain facilities that, in some cases, could end up located far from rural clinics.
In addition to inducing miscarriages, mifepristone and misoprostol have other common uses, such as treating miscarriages, inducing labor, and stopping bleeding.
More than 200 doctors in the state signed a letter to lawmakers warning that the measure could produce a “barrier to physicians’ ease in prescribing appropriate treatment” and cause unnecessary fear and confusion among patients and doctors. Doctors warn that any delay in obtaining medications could lead to worse outcomes in a state that has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country.
Pressly said she pushed for the legislation because of what happened to her sister Catherine Herring of Texas. In 2022, Herring’s husband gave her seven misoprostol pills in an effort to induce an abortion without her knowledge or consent.
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