Louisiana lawmakers on Tuesday superior a invoice that may make it against the law to own two abortion-inducing medication with no prescription, a transfer that docs concern might stop them from adequately treating their sufferers in a well timed method.
Under the invoice, which goals to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol, pregnant sufferers would nonetheless have the ability to possess the medication with a legitimate prescription. But in a state with one of many nation’s highest maternal mortality charges, docs concern the laws would have chilling results.
More than 200 docs signed a letter to lawmakers saying the measure might produce a “barrier to physicians’ ease of prescribing appropriate treatment” and trigger pointless concern and confusion amongst each sufferers and docs. The invoice heads to the Senate subsequent.
“These medications touch on maternal health, which, as we’ve all discussed for several years now, is really bad in Louisiana,” state Rep. Mandie Landry, a Democrat, mentioned as she argued in opposition to reclassification of the medication. “In their (doctors’) view, this (measure) will have very bad effects.”
The US Food and Drug Administration accepted mifepristone in 2000 to finish being pregnant, when utilized in mixture with misoprostol. The tablets additionally produce other widespread makes use of, together with to deal with miscarriages, induce labor and cease obstetric hemorrhaging.
The US Supreme Court heard arguments in March on behalf of docs who oppose abortion and need to limit entry to mifepristone. The justices didn’t seem able to restrict entry to the drug, nevertheless.
The reclassification of the 2 medication in Louisiana is an modification to a invoice originating within the Senate that may create the crime of “coerced felony abortion by way of fraud.” The measure would make it a crime for a person to knowingly use medications to cause or attempt to cause an abortion without a pregnant person’s knowledge or consent.
Proponents of the reclassification say it would prevent people from unlawfully using the pills.
“He wants to stop these abortion pills from getting into the hands of those people who should not be able to have them,” GOP state Rep. Julie Emerson said of Sen. Thomas Pressly, the Republican sponsoring the bill. Pressly’s sister has shared her own story, of her husband slipping her abortion-inducing drugs without her knowledge or consent.
The bill as amended must now return to the Senate. Specifically, the amendment aims to label the medications as Schedule IV drugs under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law.
Under the measure, doctors would need a specific license to prescribe mifepristone and misoprostol, and the drugs would have to be stored in certain facilities that in some cases could end up being located far from rural clinics. Opponents say such restrictions could cause delays in doctors prescribing and patients obtaining the drugs.
The bill, with the amendment, passed in Louisiana’s GOP-controlled House, 66-30.
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 substantial risk of death or impairment to the mother if she continues the pregnancy or in the case of “medically futile” pregnancies, when the fetus has a fatal abnormality.
Currently, 14 states are enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions.
Although it is already a crime in Louisiana to be given medication to induce an abortion, a recent survey found that thousands of women in states with abortion bans or restrictions are receiving abortion pills in the mail from states that have laws protecting prescribers.
Source: www.indiatoday.in
