BATON ROUGE, La. – Louisiana's new law categorizing two widely used abortion drugs as “controlled dangerous substances” was challenged in a state court lawsuit Thursday by a physician, a pharmacist and others who say the legislation sets up needless, dangerous delays in treatment during medical emergencies.
Although there already was a near-total abortion ban in Louisiana, including by medication, the reclassification of the drugs — mifepristone and misoprostol, which have other critical reproductive health care uses — went into effect earlier this month. Proponents of the law said more oversight and control over the drugs was needed to prevent coerced abortions. They have used as an example a Texas case in which a pregnant woman was given seven misoprostol pills by her husband without her knowledge. The baby survived.
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Doctors critical of the law have said it could harm patients facing emergency complications such as postpartum hemorrhages by requiring medical personnel to go through extra steps and more stringent storage requirements to use the drugs.
“Even short delays in accessing misoprostol can be life-threatening for postpartum hemorrhage patients,” says the lawsuit. It says the law violates the Louisiana Constitution in multiple ways, including a prohibition on discrimination based on a person's physical condition.
Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill said she had not seen the lawsuit as of Thursday afternoon. “I can’t respond to a lawsuit we have not seen, but I’m confident this law is constitutional," she said in a statement. "We will vigorously defend it.”
In addition to the physician and the pharmacist, who the lawsuit says is pregnant, the plaintiffs in the case include the Birthmark Doula Collective, an organization of people trained to provide pregnancy care before, during and after birth.
Other plaintiffs include Nancy Davis, a woman who was denied an abortion in Louisiana and traveled out of state for one after learning her fetus would not survive. A woman who said she was turned away from two emergency rooms instead of being treated for a miscarriage is also part of the lawsuit.
Prior to the reclassification, a prescription was still needed to obtain mifepristone and misoprostol in Louisiana. The new law reclassified the pills as “Schedule IV drugs,” putting them in the same category as the opioid tramadol and other substances that can be addictive.
The new classification means that if someone knowingly possesses mifepristone or misoprostol without a valid prescription for any purpose, they could be fined up to $5,000 and sent to jail for one to five years.
The law carves out protections for pregnant women who obtain the drug without a prescription to take on their own.
The legislation is a first-of-its-kind law in the U.S. While GOP Gov. Jeff Landry, many Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion groups have touted the new classification, doctors have warned of deadly delays that the law could cause.
Under the new classification, doctors say there are extra steps and more stringent storage requirements, which could slow access to the drugs in emergency situations. Beyond inducing abortions, the pills are also used to treat miscarriages, induce labor and stop hemorrhaging.
Prior to the law, some doctors said that misoprostol would be stored in a box in the hospital room, on the delivery table or in a nurse's pocket. But under the new requirements of the classification, the drugs may be down the hall in a locked container or potentially in-house pharmacy at smaller hospitals.
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McGill reported from New Orleans.