A Mississippi bill will ban abortion pill prescriptions or sales

• A Mississippi bill would make prescribing abortion-inducing medication illegal, with violators facing up to 10 years in prison.
• The legislation was added as an amendment to a bill originally focused on trafficking illegal drugs.

A House bill is one step away from making it illegal for doctors to prescribe abortion-inducing medication to Mississippians. People who violate the provision could face up to 10 years in prison.

The bill originally focused on the trafficking of illegal drugs such as marijuana and scheduled controlled substances. It added a single phrase to existing Mississippi law, clarifying the number of dosage units of a scheduled drug that someone needs to transport in order to charge them with aggravated trafficking.

Rep. Celeste Hurst, R-Sandhill, seized the opportunity to add abortion-inducing drugs to the bill when it was heard on the House floor in early February. Her amendment would allow the prosecution of people who knowingly dispense, sell or prescribe the medications.

She clarified on the floor that her intention is to require an in-person visit with a patient before a doctor can issue the medication, which is most frequently prescribed when someone is going through a miscarriage. Neither the text of her amendment nor the Senate version that passed March 11 mention a doctor’s visit.

The bill cleared the hurdle of a full House vote on Feb. 11 easily, passing with support from nearly two-thirds of the chamber. It crossed the aisle to the Senate, where first a committee, then the full chamber, also approved the bill’s new language.

Unlike with all of the other drugs mentioned, the bill doesn’t specify the amount of abortion-inducing medication that would warrant prosecution, nor does it clarify how many units would classify the crime as a felony.

Additionally, the bill allows the Attorney General to sue a person who is accused of violating the law and recover a financial penalty. Being acquitted of the criminal charge, the bill states, is not a defense in a civil case, so someone who is determined to be innocent can still face civil litigation.

The bill joins Mississippi’s existing abortion laws, which ban the practice in nearly every circumstance, barring a proven case of rape or a situation where an abortion is needed to save someone’s life. Medical providers can also face a minimum of one year and maximum of 10 years in prison for performing an illegal abortion.

Neither the House nor the Senate bill would punish people who receive or use the abortion-inducing medication illegally. This policy is meant to protect women in vulnerable situations, said Grace Bailey, a domestic violence counselor, but the impact on their wellbeing is the same as if they could be prosecuted for abortions.

Bailey, who provides counseling at women’s shelters throughout Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, said the strict abortion laws in these states have presented significant roadblocks for many women trying to leave abusive relationships.

“One of the first signs of abuse is control. We see women whose husbands or boyfriends have forced them to stop birth control or take their IUD out, and they end up pregnant, which makes them stay in the relationship way longer than they should,” she said in a March 9 interview.

Often, Bailey said, becoming pregnant is the sudden sign that makes a woman realize that she needs to leave her abusive partner.

More crime bills in the Legislature: Crime survivors, grieving families seek reform to victim compensation in MS

“Women come to us at the shelter trying to get away from a man who hurt them, who took all their money, who made them feel completely out of control of their own life,” she said. “The last thing they can handle as they’re trying to make a clean break is a baby that will connect them to their abuser for the rest of their life.”

Some women decide that an early-stage abortion, before the point of viability around 24 weeks, is the best course of action for them, Bailey said. When Mississippi outlawed abortion in 2022, she recalled a woman at a Vicksburg domestic violence shelter who chose to go back to her estranged husband because she was pregnant.

“She told me, ‘I don’t have any money, I don’t have a job, and I have no family support,’” Bailey recounted. “She felt like she had no choice, so she went back to the man who scared her more than anyone in the world. Even worse, she brought a baby into that situation.”

Bailey clarified that she supports banning abortion after 12 weeks, as opposed to Mississippi’s near-total ban, but she thinks that laws should include an exception for victims of domestic violence.

“If you can prove that you’ve gone to a women’s shelter and gotten counseling, and you’re trying to get away from an abusive relationship,” she said, “I think the compassionate thing to do is let you get a safe abortion, especially if you’re just taking a pill.”