Louisiana Doing More Anti-Abortion Drama Queen Nonsense
Louisiana Doing More Anti-Abortion Drama Queen Nonsense
Now they want to make abortion pills a 'controlled substance.'
Last week, Louisiana lawmakers empowered child rapists by voting down a bill that would have allowed an exception in their abortion ban for their victims. This week, they’re looking into classifying abortion pills as a Schedule IV “controlled substance” so that they can harshly prosecute people for helping to distribute them to those in need.
The provision was added as an amendment to SB276, a bill that “creates the crime of coerced criminal abortion by means of fraud to prohibit a third-party from knowingly using an abortion-inducing drug to cause, or attempt to cause, an abortion on an unsuspecting pregnant mother without her knowledge or consent and amends various abortion criminal laws to add the crime of attempted abortion.”
It is deeply concerning that Louisiana legislators are wholly unaware that all of this is already illegal. It is illegal, except in some emergency situations and even then only by medical professionals, to give anyone any kind of medication without their knowledge and informed consent. If they think this is legal, well, I wouldn’t leave my drink around a single one of them, is all I’m saying.
It’s also clear that they don’t really understand what controlled substances are, why some drugs are scheduled and others are not, nor anything about the specific drugs they are trying to control. Misoprostol, for instance, is primarily used to prevent ulcers from NSAIDs, as well as to help stop postpartum hemorrhaging after a miscarriage. Mifepristone is sometimes used during labor, during IUD placement, during cancer biopsies, for Cushing’s syndrome and uterine fibroids.
Other Schedule IV drugs are mostly benzodiazepines like Xanax and Ativan. These drugs are safe when used correctly, but there’s a reason that they are controlled substances and Mifepristone/Misoprostol are not. There is a chance for abuse and dependency, as well as possible dangerous interactions. Heath Ledger, for instance, died after taking a bunch of benzos, along with OxyContin and over the counter sleeping pills. The worst case interaction scenario with Mifepristone, however, is that if you take antacids containing magnesium, you could get diarrhea. While that is unpleasant, it’s not Schedule IV unpleasant.
The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Thomas Pressly, introduced it partially for personal reasons, because his sister’s ex-husband actually did secretly dose her with an abortion drug, and was not, in Pressly and his sister’s estimation, punished severely enough for it. He served 180 days in jail, and the bill would raise that to 10 years and up to $75,000 in fines.
It would be one thing to increase the penalties for dosing anyone in any kind of way, but there’s a reason they’re specifying abortion drugs. What they want is to prevent people from getting them for women who want to take them voluntarily but cannot because of their state’s gross law, and to institute major penalties for this. What they want is to be able to better track doctors who may still be prescribing these pills to abortion-seeking patients for reasons other than abortion.
Gallingly, Pressly claims he is protecting those women as well.
Pressly did not return repeated requests for comment, but in a statement released by his office, he explained that he was seeking to “control the rampant illegal distribution of abortion-inducing drugs” in Louisiana. He said abortion medication “is frequently abused and is a risk to the health of citizens.” By including the drugs on the controlled substances list, he added, “we will assist law enforcement in protecting vulnerable women and unborn babies.”
This is part of a trend of Republican politicians — aware that people think they are harming women by trying to control their reproductive futures — trying to flip the script and insinuate that it’s actually nefarious “outside agitators” who are trying to convince vulnerable women to terminate pregnancies they would otherwise actually want. This is nonsense. Outside of obviously horrific situations like the one Pressly’s sister experienced, no one is going around trying to convince anyone to have an abortion just for the sheer joy of it.
There’s a reason they don’t get specific, usually. Because we can all look at a situation like that of Pressly’s sister and see that there are obviously ways to get justice and protection for those in similar situations without even making it about “abortion.” They use stock characters — the evil whore who wants to have sex with all the menfolk without any consequences even though a forced pregnancy could ultimately lead to her redemption; the tragic and confused fallen woman who is pressured into having an abortion she will later regret; the outside agitators who, again, just really enjoy other people having abortions for some nonspecific reason; the doctors who perform “post-birth abortions” for the sinful women who demand it — instead of real people who actually exist. This way they can carve out an imaginary world in which they are the good guys and they are the heroes without ever having to engage with any of the actual reasons why people have abortions.
They are cowards who hide behind evil, nonconsensual abortion-inducing ex-husbands and other bad actors with bad intentions. They don’t want to come right out and say that they are going to throw people in prison for a decade for helping those who are in need of help — even though that is exactly what this bill will do.
PREVIOUSLY:
It may be worth noting, if it hasn't already been, that Louisiana was the first state to criminalize cannabis, back during the Jazz Age, kicking off what became a century of madness that the nation is only now escaping.
The relentlessly dishonest malignancy of the Putin Party rolls on unimpeded by fact checking, a tidal wave of evil bullshit.