5 months ago
33
Louisiana
became the first state to make it a crime to possess the two main US abortion pills without a
prescription
, after a new law added
mifepristone
and
misoprostol
to the list of controlled substances like highly addictive narcotics.
Governor Jeff Landry
, a Republican who opposes abortion access, said in a social-media post Friday that he'd signed the bill into law, just a day after the state Senate passed a bill by a 29 to 7 vote.
The law goes into effect Oct 1. "Requiring an abortion inducing drug to be obtained with a prescription and criminalizing the use of an abortion drug on an unsuspecting mother is nothing short of common sense," Landry said in a post on X. "This bill protects women across Louisiana."
Louisiana, which has a near-total ban on terminating pregnancies, now classifies mifepristone and misoprostol the same way as drugs with the potential for addiction. Criminalizing possession of the non-addictive medications could trigger similar measures in other GOP-led states, where lawmakers have expanded limits on access to abortion since the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe vs. Wade decision.
Mifepristone and misoprostol are the most commonly-used method of terminating a pregnancy in the US, accounting for 63% of abortions last year, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Louisiana's maternal mortality rate exceeds the national average, ranking 47th out of 48 states between 2018 and 2021, according to the CDC. Other states with strict abortion laws also had high maternal mortality rates, including Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama.
