The Louisiana House approved a bill Tuesday that would add two medications commonly used to induce abortions to the state's list of controlled dangerous substances, making possession of the drugs without valid prescriptions a crime punishable by fines, jail time or both.
The measure, which has drawn support from radical anti-abortion groups and alarm from medical professionals and reproductive rights advocates, would add the medications mifepristone and misoprostol to Schedule IV of the state's Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law. Abortion — both medical and surgical — is illegal in Louisiana, so it is already illegal to prescribe the medications to terminate pregnancies, except in very limited circumstances.
Medication abortions accounted for 63 percent of all abortions last year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights think tank.
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