FRIDAY, May 24, 2024 (HealthDay News) -- Louisiana has become the first state to pass a law that designates abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances. Once signs the bill into law, as he is expected to do, possession of the drugs and without a prescription would be a crime punishable with possible fines and jail time. Louisiana already has a near-total abortion ban, so the medications, which are also used for miscarriages and ulcers, are only available in that state under limited circumstances.
Medical experts warned of the bill's dangers. “What it’s going to do is make it harder to use these drugs safely and legally,” , director of the New Orleans Health Department and organizer of a letter opposing the bill, told the . “It’s going to create confusion, fear, barriers to using these drugs for all of their non-abortion indications.
" But Republicans and the anti-abortion groups have claimed that abortion rights groups of creating unnecessary fear over the legislation, the reported. “This legislation does NOT prohibit these drugs from being prescribed and dispensed in Louisiana for legal and legitimate reasons,” on social media. Abortion opponents have argued that abortion pills are unsafe, making that claim in a before the U.
S. Supreme Court that seeks to curtail access to mifepristone, the first pill in the two-drug medication abortion regimen that now accounts for nearly in the United States. Many patients who live in Louisiana or other states with abort.
