This week the Louisiana Legislature passed the Catherine and Josephine Herring Act to safeguard women and girls, as well as unborn children, against abortion drug coercion. This bill is tragically necessary since the Biden FDA and many Democrat-led states have been dangerously derelict in allowing anyone – abusers and traffickers included – to easily buy abortion drugs online and get them shipped in the mail.
Those who follow Texas news may recall the case of Catherine Herring of Houston, whose soon-to-be-ex-husband repeatedly spiked her drinks with the drug misoprostol while she was pregnant, took a plea deal and got a mere 180 days’ jail time:
On seven occasions starting in March 2022, Ms. Herring said, her husband gave her drinks with an unknown substance in them. The following month, Ms. Herring found packaging in the trash that was labeled “Cyrux,” the brand of an abortion pill sold in Mexico, according to the criminal complaint. The main ingredient in Cyrux is misoprostol, which is used for abortions in some countries.
…
Despite her husband’s attempt, Ms. Herring said she gave birth to a girl who was born 10 weeks premature and had to spend 117 days during the first nine months of her life in the hospital. Ms. Herring said their daughter, who is now 18 months old, has developmental delays that have required her to attend therapy.
Ms. Herring said that she “absolutely” believed that her husband’s actions played a role in their daughter’s premature birth.
Herring’s brother Thomas Pressly is a state senator in Louisiana, a deeply pro-life state where unborn children are broadly protected throughout pregnancy. His bill makes it a crime to coerce an abortion by means of fraud, prohibiting “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.”
The bill adds mifepristone and misoprostol to the list of controlled substances in Louisiana – which, as SBA’s Southern Regional Director Caitlin Connors points out, is no different from how they treat legal drugs with legitimate medical uses like morphine and Valium.
Rohypnol, a.k.a. “the date rape drug,” is also a controlled substance.
In Louisiana, a commonsense bill like this passes with two-to-one, bipartisan support.
Catherine Herring did not choose abortion; she and her unborn daughter were assaulted in a callous act of domestic violence. This should be an obvious win for everyone who purports to care about women and their rights.
Yet national Democratic leaders, like the vice president, don’t seem to care:
These are lies. Mere possession is not a crime. Possession without a valid prescription is. Women are explicitly not punished for having them or even for taking them voluntarily.
Some conspiracy-minded left-wing influencers and party officials came entirely unglued:
Here is how Rolling Stone characterized the bill, barely acknowledging that Catherine Herring’s ex tried to kill their child and put her in the hospital in the process:
This is another lie. As with other legal controlled substances, doctors are free to continue prescribing the drugs when needed for non-abortion reasons, like miscarriage care. There is no law stopping them.
Abortion drugs are not prone to the same kind of abuse as drugs that can get people high. Yet their utility to abusive partners and traffickers hardly needs explanation.
Nor is the risk hypothetical. In another case in Florida, a jealous ex tried to bribe a man to give abortion drugs – obtained “from a virtual doctor online” – to his pregnant ex-fiancé. (Thankfully, he contacted police instead.) Nearly a quarter of women who’ve had abortions describe them as coerced or unwanted.
And abortion drugs are not only harmful to unborn babies. According to the FDA’s own label, about one in 25 women who take mifepristone will end up in the emergency room. Misoprostol alone, when used to kill the baby in an abortion, is even worse – studies have found high failure rates requiring surgery, on top of serious risks to the child in an ongoing pregnancy.
Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood recently announced they will dispense abortion drugs to “pregnant patients up to 10 weeks with an Illinois mailing address” via mobile app:
“It is for us an opportunity for folks to engage with the app in a way that can be completely free of face-to-face interaction with a clinician,” said Dr. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer of the Planned Parenthood St. Louis Region.
(If the name Colleen McNicholas sounds familiar, here again is her congressional testimony explaining how abortionists who directly profit can find any reason to justify any abortion at any point in pregnancy.)
But is this faceless new world really anyone’s idea of quality “health care”?
Polls have found that over six in 10 Americans oppose sending abortion drugs through the mail. Reuters-Ipsos recently found that, by a 17-point margin, Americans agree that women deserve to see a doctor in person and this should be a requirement for abortion drugs.
The mask is coming off. The abortion industry has removed doctors from the process and is utterly unconcerned about coercion or lack of informed consent.
They’ll also aid and abet traffickers who take minor children across state lines – stating that they “never tell the parents anything.” If parents try to protect their daughters from these creeps, in Illinois, pro-abortion Democrats will tar them as child abusers in the eyes of the law. (No exaggeration. Here’s the bill on the General Assembly website.)
Unsurprisingly, Planned Parenthood, NARAL and other pro-abortion groups are dropping all pretense of calling their objectives “pro-choice.”
We look forward to Governor Jeff Landry signing this bill into law. Catherine Herring herself said it best:
There was no ‘choice’ involved when my husband slipped abortion drugs into my drinks seven times. I suffered serious side effects from the drugs that almost took my daughter’s life. As a survivor of domestic violence, I’m grateful for Louisiana’s willingness to protect women and children from those who intend to harm them with abortion drugs.
Roe v. Wade is gone. But Big Abortion has struck back with an epidemic of abortion drug use —silent, seductive, and more dangerous than any other form of abortion.
As a pro-life American, you need to learn the surprising facts that will save lives and defeat this chemical devastation.
Get your copy now.
Get Your eBook
