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medication abortion
Outrage as GOP AGs Argue Fewer Pregnant Teens Deprive States of Population Increases
"This is what potentially winning right-wing legal cases read like these days," said one progressive activist. "Dark stuff."
Oct 22, 2024
Opinion polls have repeatedly made clear that U.S. voters are turned off by the Republican Party's fixation on banning abortion care and controlling Americans' reproductive choices—but that didn't stop three GOP officials from writing in a court filing this month that they want to restrict abortion pill access because it would reduce teen pregnancy rates in their state.
"In my expert legal opinion, this is deeply gross and weird," wrote attorney and writer Madiba K. Dennie on Monday at Balls & Strikes, a news outlet focused on the judiciary.
Dennie was referring to a legal filing by Republican Attorneys General Andrew Bailey of Missouri, Kris Kobach of Kansas, and Raúl Labrador of Idaho in a case regarding mifepristone, one of two pills commonly used in medication abortions—which account for more than half of abortions in the United States.
As S.P. Rogers wrote at the newsletter Repro-Truth, attorneys general filed an amended complaint earlier this month in an effort to revive Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), a case in which the plaintiffs argued in favor of severely restricting mifepristone access nationwide.
The three states had joined the case earlier this year, before the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case based on the plaintiffs' lack of standing.
Because the high court didn't outright dismiss the case, the three attorneys general were able to file a complaint on October 11 seeking to prohibit mifepristone use for anyone under the age of 18 and overturn eased restrictions for the drug.
Bailey, Kobach, and Labrador argued that mifepristone access would could cause "injuries" to their states because it is "depressing expected birth rates for teenaged mothers."
"A loss of potential population causes further injuries as well: The [states'] subsequent 'diminishment of political representation' and 'loss of federal funds,' such as potentially 'losing a seat in Congress or qualifying for less federal funding if their populations are' reduced or their increase diminished," reads the court filing.
In other words, wrote Rogers, in the view of the Republican state officials, "teenage girls, which the states refer to as 'teenaged mothers,' exist for the purposes of churning out new citizens for the states."
"Idaho, Kansas, and Missouri are claiming to have a legitimate, sovereign state interest in forced birth—in teenage girls and women as breeders. It's an argument that positions everyone capable of birthing as brood mares—a scenario in which the state does not exist for the people, but the people for the state—and augurs a future claim for the prohibition of contraception," added Rogers.
Republicans including GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump have signaled their desire to roll back the right to contraception.
At Balls & Strikes, Dennie wrote that the GOP officials made clear that they believe "uteri are state slush funds, and girls owe the state reproduction once they are capable of it."
"A personal dislike of somebody else taking medicine is not a legitimate grievance," wrote Dennie. "So the states are trying to show that they are entitled to the population growth and accompanying funds that pregnant minors would produce, and the FDA is getting in the way of that."
While the argument is "shocking in its brazenness," added Dennie, it shouldn't come as a surprise in a country where the Republican Party has shown no sign of backing down from its goal of banning abortion, even as news reports mount about children who have been forced to give birth and pregnant patients who have died or become gravely ill because healthcare providers have refused to treat them for fear of prosecution.
The legal complaint, said Dennie, "is a natural outgrowth of the conservative legal movement's efforts to subordinate women."
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'Trump Is to Blame': Louisiana to Classify Abortion Pills as 'Dangerous' Drugs
"When Donald Trump says abortion should be left to the states, this is what he's advocating," said former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards.
May 24, 2024
Abortion rights advocates on Thursday said former Republican President Donald Trump bears responsibility for Louisiana's newly passed law that would classify two drugs used in medication abortions as controlled dangerous substances—a product, the critics said, of Trump's efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade, his advocacy for government surveillance of pregnant Americans, and his push to leave abortion laws up to the states.
The state Senate passed the bill Thursday, sending it to the desk of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, who has indicated he plans to sign it.
State Sen. Thomas Pressly (R-38) is the lead sponsor of the bill, which principally aims to make it illegal to use mifepristone and misoprostol to induce an abortion in pregnant person without their knowledge and consent—an incident in which Pressly's sister was a victim in 2022 in Texas, but not one that Republicans found had ever happened in Louisiana.
After the original bill passed in the Senate, Pressly added a number of amendments including one classifying the medications as "controlled dangerous substances" and placing them alongside drugs including Flunitrazepam—which is marketed as Rohypnol and has been used to sedate victims of sexual assault—in Schedule IV in the state's drug scheduling system.
U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said the bill is proof that the right-wing push to restrict and ban abortion care has "always been about controlling women's bodies and futures," while Vice President Kamala Harris said that "Donald Trump is to blame" for a bill that could carry penalties including years of jail time for people found to have misoprostol and mifepristone without a prescription.
The amendment prompted outcry from more than 200 healthcare professionals across Louisiana as well as Louisiana Society of Addiction Medicine, which noted the drug scheduling system is meant to classify drugs based on their potential for abuse and takes into account their medical benefits.
In addition to being used in medication abortions—which are illegal in Louisiana under the state's near-total abortion ban—misoprostol is used regularly to induce labor, to prep a patient's cervix for an intrauterine device insertion, and to stop postpartum hemorrhaging, which is a leading cause of maternal mortality. Lousiana has among the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation.
Mifepristone is also approved by the Food and Drug Administration to help manage Cushing's syndrome, a disease in which a patient produces excess cortisol.
But with the two medications reclassified as dangerous drugs, medical professionals would be required to have a special license to prescribe them, and rural clinics may have limited access to them as they would have to be stored in specific facilities.
"When Donald Trump says abortion should be left to the states, this is what he's advocating," said former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards as the Republican runs for a second term in the White House.
State Sen. Roy Duplessis (D-5) said the bill will "lead to further harm down the road" for pregnant people.
"There's a reason we rank at the bottom in terms of maternal health outcomes, and this is why," he said.
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Louisiana GOP Moves to Classify Abortion Pills as 'Controlled Dangerous Substances'
"Mischaracterizing misoprostol... as a dangerous drug of abuse creates confusion and misinformation, and harms women seeking high quality maternal care," said more than 280 healthcare providers.
May 21, 2024
Ignoring the pleas of nearly 300 doctors and other healthcare professionals, the Republican-controlled Lousiana state House on Tuesday was poised to vote on a bill that would reclassify two drugs used in medication abortions as "controlled dangerous substances"—and potentially limiting healthcare providers' access to the frequently prescribed pills.
Senate Bill 276, originally proposed by state Sen. Thomas Pressly (R-38), centers on making it a crime in the state to use the pills to induce an abortion "on an unsuspecting pregnant mother without her knowledge or consent," but after its passage in the Senate, Pressly added amendments to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol.
Under the legislation, a person found with the pills without a prescription could be convicted of a felony, punishable with up to 10 years in prison.
Healthcare workers across Louisiana have called on Pressly to reconsider his amendments, which were co-written by the powerful pro-forced pregnancy group Louisiana Right to Life, and have warned they could dangerously delay or eliminate care for other health conditions for which the medications are prescribed.
"Mischaracterizing misoprostol, a drug routinely and safely used on labor units throughout the state, as a dangerous drug of abuse creates confusion and misinformation, and harms women seeking high quality maternal care," wrote more than 280 health professionals in a recent letter to Landry.
The doctors emphasized that with one of the country's most stringent abortion bans in place in Louisiana, healthcare workers have not recently been prescribing misoprostol for abortion care.
But the drug is used on a daily basis in the state's hospitals and doctor's offices, they said, to treat people who have suffered miscarriages, to induce labor, to prepare the cervix for intrauterine device (IUD) insertions, and to stop postpartum hemorrhaging—the third leading cause of maternal mortality.
"Misoprostol is such a literal life-saver," New Orleans OB-GYN Dr. Nicole Freehill toldRolling Stone on Tuesday. "It's a very inexpensive medication and very effective at preventing hemorrhage, for IUD insertions, for endometrial biopsies, to prep a patient's cervix when they have a miscarriage. It's utilized for so many things and on a very regular basis."
State Rep. Mandie Landry (D-91) called the effort to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol as dangerous drugs "harmful and malicious."
"It is purely the product of Louisiana Right to Life and their politics," Landry toldRolling Stone. "Doctors and common sense are all against it."
The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) said that the "first-in-the-nation" bill would further endanger pregnant people in a state where a near-total abortion ban has already "ravaged reproductive healthcare."
A report released in March by Physicians for Human Rights showed that unnecessary cesarean sections have been performed more frequently under the ban in cases of preterm labor, in order "to preserve the appearance of not doing an abortion" and to protect physicians from potential prosecutions. The pregnant patients were not given a choice regarding whether to have the major abdominal surgery. Doctors in the state have also begun delaying routine prenatal care until the second trimester to avoid suspicion, in the case of a miscarriage, that they performed an abortion.
"Patients across the country should be put on notice—we know Republicans across the country will soon feel emboldened to follow in Louisiana's footsteps and criminalize abortion medication too," said Ahbi Rahman, communications director for the DLCC. "The DLCC will continue to sound the alarm on egregious attacks on women and healthcare providers—in Louisiana and across the nation. State legislatures are the battlegrounds determining the whole spectrum of reproductive care."
On Monday, the Louisiana Society of Addiction Medicine submitted a letter to state House Speaker Phillip R. DeVillier (R-41), saying Pressly's proposal "goes against the spirit of the drug scheduling system, which is designed to classify drugs based upon their danger, potential for misuse, and medical benefits."
"Simply put, S.B. 276 represents a clear and worrying interference in the patient-clinician relationship that will negatively impact populations that we serve," said the group.
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