ICYMI
ICYMI: Mississippi House and Senate Take Steps to Criminalize Abortion Medication
This week, the Mississippi House and Senate voted to advance House Bill 1613, a bill that would create criminal penalties for anyone who manufactures, sells, distributes, dispenses, or prescribes medication abortion, including mifepristone and misoprostol.
House Bill 1613 takes Mississippi’s already extreme abortion ban a step further. This bill:
- Criminalizes any manufacturer or provider of abortion medication,
- Punishes any violation of this law with up to 10 years in prison,
- And empowers the state’s attorney general to sue people for violating the law and to recover monetary damages.
If passed, H.B. 1613 would empower Mississippi prosecutors to attack out-of-state abortion care providers, invoking sweeping implications for telemedicine. Under Texas’s similar law, Attorney General Ken Paxton is attempting to sue abortion shield providers.
This measure comes as Mississippi’s neighboring state, Louisiana, is advancing a court case that seeks to reinstate medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone in all 50 states. If the court sides with anti-abortion extremists, it could gut telehealth access to medication abortion and require patients to pick up mifepristone in person at a clinic, hospital, or medical office—even in states where abortion is legal and constitutionally protected.
In 2024, Louisiana also took similar steps to criminalize abortion medication, and it has wreaked havoc on access to abortion care, pregnancy care, fertility care, and other medical care that relies on mifepristone and misoprostol in the state. If Mississippi passes a law similar to its neighboring state, miscarriage care, postpartum care, and abortion care provided under the state’s existing narrow exceptions will be similarly difficult to access, which could lead to devastating consequences.
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For over 55 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.