BATON ROUGE, La. — Lawmakers in Louisiana will debate a bill that will criminalize the use of two prescription abortion drugs by a third party on a pregnant woman without her knowledge or consent.
Amended Senate Bill 276, authored by Sen. Thomas Pressly, R-Shreveport, would classify Mifepristone and Misoprostol as a Schedule IV drug.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's list of Schedule IV drugs includes Xanax, Soma, Ambien, and Tramadol among other narcotics.
Sen. Pressly drafted the bill following an incident where the husband of his sister, Texas resident Catherine Herring, put the abortion pills in her drink to induce an abortion without her knowledge or consent. The abortion didn’t work, and the child was born 10 weeks early with special needs.
According to SB 276 description the bill “Creates the crime of coerced criminal abortion by means of fraud to prohibit a third-party from knowingly using an abortion-inducing drug to cause, or attempt to cause, an abortion on an unsuspecting pregnant mother without her knowledge or consent and amends various abortion criminal laws to add the crime of attempted abortion.”
Mifepristone and Misoprostol are prescription pills used to induce an abortion up to 10 weeks gestation.
The classification also adds extra requirements and layers to the prescription process and possession without a prescription would be punishable by up to ten years in prison.
Sarah Zagorski, the Communications Director for Louisiana Right to Life, said, "We are grateful that our legislators recognize the dangers of these medications being for sale on the street and online for anyone to abuse. We thank the House for taking action to protect women like Catherine Herring and keeping these abortion pills out of the hands of predators who want to harm women and unborn babies."
"We applaud Representative Julie Emerson for her steadfast defense of SB 276. We know this is a step toward protecting Louisiana women and girls."
Louisiana has a near-total abortion ban in place, which applies both to medical and surgical abortions. The only exceptions to the ban are if there is a risk of death or impairment to the mother if she continues the pregnancy or when the fetus has a fatal abnormality.
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.