Following overwhelmingly supportive votes in both the Mississippi House and Senate, the legislature has sent pro-life Gov. Tate Reeves a bill that would ban the mailing, shipping, or prescribing of abortion drugs.
“Lawmakers added restrictions on abortion-inducing drugs to a drug trafficking bill that passed the House 76-38 and the Senate 37-15 on Tuesday,” The Associated Press reported .
House Bill 1613 was amended to treat the distribution of drugs such as mifepristone and misoprostol with the intent to cause an abortion as a form of drug trafficking.
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Supporters emphasize that the legislation targets only those who prescribe, distribute, or traffic abortion drugs.
Mississippi State Rep. Celeste Hurst, who introduced the amendment, told the Mississippi Free Press.
that the intention of her amendment is to ensure patient safety by clarifying that it is illegal under state law for doctors to prescribe those medications without an in-person visit from a patient.
“Right now, it’s being mailed out without any doctor oversight and without any age verification whatsoever—they’re not even verifying if the person they’re communicating with via form is a woman,” she told the Mississippi Free Press on Feb. 16.
Hurst made clear that under HB 1613, “If a doctor gave that medication for an abortion, they would be doing a criminal act,” but that “if they prescribed it for something that is not abortion-inducing, then there’s nothing in that law, or in current law, that would prohibit them from doing that.”
State Sen. Daniel Sparks added that “Anyone, male or female, could fill out a form and have that drug shipped to them. A human trafficker could put it in a woman’s hot cocoa.”
Post Dobbs, Mississippi has passed some of the most protective abortion laws in the nation. It is generally considered to be one of the five most pro-life states.
By contrast the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute lists Mississippi in its “most restrictive” category.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.
