JACKSON, Mississippi (LifeSiteNews) — The Mississippi House has passed legislation that would criminalize the sending of abortion pills via the mail as a felony drug trafficking offense with stiff penalties attached.
House Bill 1613, originally intended to provide legal sanctions for persons possessing 200 or more grams of illegal drugs, was amended to encompass doctors or providers who prescribe drugs such as mifepristone and misoprostol without an in-person patient visit.
The measure, passed with a 77 to 39 vote, will now be taken up by the Mississippi Senate.
The legislation is necessary because the Biden administration repealed the requirement that abortion pills be distributed in person.
Since then, according to a report by Live Action, “predatory and abusive men have taken advantage of the opportunity to secure these pills and then use them to coerce or force women into aborting their preborn children.”
READ: Pro-life senators slam Trump admin for lack of progress on abortion pill safety review
The text of the bill explains:
[I]t is unlawful for any person knowingly or intentionally: To create, sell, barter, transfer, manufacture, distribute, dispense, prescribe or possess with intent to create, sell, barter, transfer, manufacture, distribute, dispense or prescribe an “abortion-inducing drug,” which is defined as a medicine, drug or any other substance prescribed or dispensed with the intent of terminating the clinically diagnosable pregnancy of a woman to cause the death of the unborn child.
This includes the use of drugs known to have abortion-inducing properties, which are prescribed specifically with the intent of causing an abortion. Use of those drugs to induce abortion is also known as “medical abortion.”
This definition does not apply to drugs that may be known to cause an abortion but are prescribed for other medical indications, such chemotherapeutic agents and diagnostic drugs.
“Right now, it’s being mailed out without any doctor oversight and without any age verification whatsoever—they’re not even verifying if the person they’re communicating with via form is a woman,” Republican Rep. Celeste Hurst who introduced the amendment, told the Mississippi Free Press on earlier this week.
Abortion-inducing drugs are “damaging to women when not under the care of a physician, and that is how these drugs are coming in,” Hurst explained during a floor discussion. “They’re coming in from out of state without a physician’s oversight. They’re being shipped in. You could go on, as a man, and get this drug by just filling out a form.”