Mother Jones; Allen G. Breed/AP; Getty
When Dr. Veronica Gillispie-Bell, a board-certified OB-GYN based in New Orleans, walks into a hospital room to deliver a baby, one of the first things she does is ask the nurse on duty, “Do we have our hemorrhage meds?”
Postpartum hemorrhage, or severe bleeding after childbirth, is a leading—but preventable—cause of maternal death in the US and around the world. It occurs in an estimated 1 to 5 percent of pregnancies. For doctors like Gillispie-Bell, who has testified before Congress about the Black maternal mortality crisis, having medications on hand to treat patients immediately is critical to saving lives. Until last week, those drugs included misoprostol, which also happens to be one of the two pills used in medication abortion.
But obtaining access to the drug has suddenly become far more complicated. On October 1, Louisiana—which has a near-total ban on abortion—became the first state to officially begin classifying misoprostol and mifepristone, the other drug in the standard abortion pill regimen, as schedule IV controlled substances. The new law threatens anyone who possesses the medications without a prescription—except for pregnant women themselves—with up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine.
To say that this designation—the same one applied to opioids and other addictive drugs—is without scientific or medical merit is an understatement. More than 100 studies have found that mifepristone and misoprostol offer a safe and effective way to terminate a pregnancy. As I reported earlier this year, that includes a study showing that abortion pills are just as safe and effective when prescribed via telemedicine and mailed to patients as when prescribed and dispensed in person. In a letter to state Sen. Thomas Pressly, the Republican behind the new law, hundreds of doctors—including Gillispie-Bell—pointed out that mifepristone and misoprostol don’t have addictive potential or high rates of negative side effects, but do have important medical benefits, including managing miscarriages, preventing ulcers, and inducing labor.
But abortion opponents have shown time and time again that they are impervious to scientific and medical expertise. Pressly, for example, has publicly attacked journalists who have reported critically on the law and blamed the deaths of two Georgia women on........