This week, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that will ensure more women who are seeking abortions are harmed by chemical abortion pills. The legislation, which took effect immediately, advances dangerous chemical abortion access with virtually zero accountability by allowing anonymous prescriptions of abortion drugs, helping circumvent pro-life laws in other states with the interstate mailing of abortion pills, and with unprecedented shielding of abortionists from legal repercussions.
Chemical abortion drugs, such as Mifepristone and its generic equivalents, are the most common early-term abortion method accounting for at least 63 percent of all abortions nationwide. Recent studies show that the number of women being harmed after ingesting these harmful drugs are as high as 10.9 percent after just one dose.
Yet, Assembly Bill 260 largely ignores health and safety data to make abortion drugs as widely available as possible while protecting abortion businesses.
Anonymous Prescriptions
Firstly, AB 260 amends state law to allow California doctors to anonymously prescribe Mifepristone. Under the law, pharmacists may now dispense the dangerous drug without the doctor’s name, patient’s name, or the pharmacy’s name and address on the prescription label. This anonymity makes it more difficult for women, especially women coerced into an abortion, as well as parents or even law enforcement to identify the abortionists responsible when health complications arise.
Mifepristone, taken in combination with Misoprostol, forms the two-drug regimen that causes a chemical abortion. Mifepristone is manufactured under the label Mifeprex, and comes with a “black box warning,” which is the FDA’s strongest warning for drugs with major risks. These medications have been associated with various health risks, including heavy bleeding, infection, and incomplete abortion, which may necessitate surgical intervention. For women who often administer chemical abortion drugs alone and at home, it can be very difficult to tell the difference between the expected pain and bleeding from the abortion and actual life-threatening complications.
The anonymity provisions of AB 260 could potentially exacerbate these risks by limiting the ability of health care providers to monitor patients and respond promptly to complications.
Circumventing Federal and State Laws
AB 260 authorizes doctors to prescribe abortion drugs through out-of-state telehealth appointments and then mail the pills nationwide. The law’s language specifically disregards federal laws like the 1873 Comstock Act, which prohibits the mailing of abortion materials across state lines, as well as pro-life state laws in other states designed to protect women and the unborn.
AB 260 states that “the laws of another state or federal actions that interfere” with abortionists to deliver Mifepristone or any other chemical abortion drug are “against the public policy of this state.”
Combined with its anonymity provisions, the law enables abortionists to distribute abortion drugs in states where it is illegal to prescribe, dispense, and mail them. Essentially, AB 260 creates a haven for abortionists to intentionally violate the pro-life laws of other states.
Unprecedented Legal Protections for Abortionists
AB 260 enacts unprecedented and sweeping legal immunities for abortionists, including protection from civil, criminal, and administrative actions for prescribing or distributing abortion drugs, even if used in ways not approved by FDA.
In California, this law “prohibit[s]” disciplinary action against abortionists for using Mifepristone or any other abortion-inducing drug “for a use that is different from the use for which that drug has been approved for marketing by the FDA or that varies from an approved risk evaluation and mitigation strategy [REMS],” stated the law.
By allowing deviations from established safety protocols in the FDA-approved REMS, the bill exposes women to potentially unverified and unsafe medical practices while shielding anyone with a role in the delivery chain of the drugs. The law specifically protects abortionists in the “manufacture, transport, distribution, delivery, receipt, acquisition, sale, possession, furnishment, dispensation, repackaging, or storage of brand name or generic Mifepristone or any drug used for medication abortion.”
Essentially, AB 260 makes it “public policy” in California to conceal identities during abortion-related transactions, violate abortion laws of other states through interstate abortion pill distribution, and shield abortionists from any liability or repercussions for the harm they inflict on women and their unborn babies through abortion drugs.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “California’s Assembly Bill 260 is about propagating a culture of death and protecting the profits of abortion businesses over the lives and health of women and the unborn. California is now a safe harbor for abortion trafficking insulating abortion providers from accountability across state lines for the damage abortion drugs can cause. Many women are now likely to end up in emergency rooms suffering from medical complications with no legal recourse. The Cocmstock Act, which is largely unenforced today, should be enforced to protect women and the unborn and to keep state pro-abortion laws from undermining pro-life laws in other states.”
SOURCE Liberty Counsel
