Doctors, Patients Sue Louisiana for Criminalizing Abortion Pills

On October 1, Louisiana became the first state in the nation to enact a law that criminalizes the most common medication abortion pills, mifepristone and misoprostol. Doctors and medical experts immediately warned that the law could have life-or-death consequences, because misoprostol is essential to stop postpartum hemorrhaging, which is the foremost cause of maternal mortality. One month later, plaintiffs who include the Birthmark Doula Collective in New Orleans; a doctor; pharmacist; and women who say they were denied emergency treatment under the law, filed a lawsuit against the state on Thursday, arguing the law is unconstitutional due to its “regulation of medications that people need for non-abortion reasons simply because those medications may also be used for an abortion.”

“Restricting immediate access to essential medications like misoprostol compromises our ability to provide urgent, lifesaving care, putting more lives at risk in a system already strained by severe health inequities,” the Birthmark collective said in a statement. The office of Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) didn’t immediately respond to Jezebel’s request for comment about the lawsuit; patients’ allegations that they’ve been denied medically necessary treatment under the law; or doctors’ concerns that it could worsen the state’s already poor maternal mortality rates.

The law, which Landry signed in May, criminalizes mifepristone and misoprostol by adding them to the state’s controlled dangerous substances list as a Schedule IV drug—even though a substance must be addictive to be classified as such. Anyone who possesses the medications without a prescription could face prison time. The law offers an exception for pregnant people who are imminently about to use the pills to end a pregnancy. But, in May, one legal expert warned Jezebel that it’s unclear how law enforcement will determine this, and the process would be “incredibly invasive and intrusive.”

This week’s lawsuit claims the law subjects urgent, emergency medications to a “highly regulated legal scheme” that delays care, jeopardizing patients’ lives. Under the law, Louisiana hospitals can no longer carry misoprostol on birthing carts to ensure that pregnant patients who are hemorrhaging can receive it as quickly as possible. Doctors at several hospital systems in the state reported that misoprostol will now be kept in locked cabinets and require a system override to access. “It adds several minutes to that process,” one Louisiana doctor told CNN last month. “If you’ve ever watched someone bleed out after childbirth, as I have, you know that minutes can make a difference.” The lawsuit warns that “Birthmark’s clients are hindered in advocating for their own rights because patients, for instance, cannot go to court to challenge a law while hemorrhaging.”

Tamika Thomas-Magee, the director of clinical services at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, told NBC shortly after the law took effect that it’s a “scare tactic” to dissuade healthcare providers from ever prescribing or offering the medications for any reason. Another doctor explained that “every time one of our physicians writes a misoprostol prescription, that’s going to be documented,” which creates “a real fear” among OBGYNs that they could be suspected of “secretly doing abortions” for prescribing or providing the medications, even in emergencies.

As the lawsuit this week notes, mifepristone and misoprostol are used in a range of medical situations, from treating miscarriages to aiding IUD insertions. The World Health Organization classifies misoprostol as an essential medication to stop life-threatening postpartum hemorrhaging. And, to be clear, using the medications to end an unwanted pregnancy is a perfectly valid medical situation too.

Louisiana’s law is part of a rising, right-wing narrative falsely equating medication abortion with deadly narcotics like fentanyl, even as all available data shows that abortion pills are highly safe. In May, Dana Sussman, senior vice president of Pregnancy Justice, told Jezebel that with “no medical or scientific justification whatsoever,” the Louisiana bill relies on the same racist framework of the War on Drugs and “builds on the blueprint for broader abortion and pregnancy-related criminalization that we’ve been seeing for some time.”

Nonetheless, Louisiana Republicans shepherded it through the legislature this spring. The law’s author, state Sen. Thomas Pressly (R), introduced the bill on behalf of his sister, whose husband added abortion pills to her drink without her knowledge. But drugging someone without their consent is already a criminal offense. So, all Pressly’s law does is endanger pregnant patients, and, as medication abortion steadily rises as the most common form of abortion, other anti-abortion states are expected to roll out copycat legislation.