Pro-abortion states are passing laws stripping prescriber names off chemical abortion pill labels.
The laws further insulate doctors who prescribe chemical abortion pills to people in pro-life states from investigation and prosecution.
Prescription Label Laws
New York, Maine, Vermont, Washington and Colorado have passed laws allowing prescribers to remove their names from prescriptions for mifepristone and misoprostol, the drugs used in a chemical abortion.
The laws make it nearly impossible for pro-life states to identify out-of-state, online abortionists—let alone investigate or sue them.
It’s unclear whether this kind of legislation is even legal; federal law requires prescriber names appear on all drug labels. But, so far, the laws remain unchallenged — and deeply problematic for pro-life states.
Importantly, prescription label laws making abortionists anonymous cover both local doctors prescribing abortions and doctors from other states that fill orders through local pharmacies. That means a mail-order abortionist in California could strip his name from a chemical abortion prescription if he filled the script at a pharmacy in New York.
California hopes to capitalize on this loophole by passing AB 260 — a bill that would remove both prescriber and patient names from chemical abortion pill labels. Most pharmacies that dispense mifepristone are in California, according to the left-leaning news outlet 19th Street
AB 260 is awaiting committee action in the California Senate. It passed the Assembly in May.
Shield Laws
Prescription label laws anonymizing abortionists beef up pro-abortion “shield laws” against pro-life judicial challenges.
States with abortion “shield laws” promise not to investigate out-of-state abortion providers or cooperate with investigations and prosecutions from pro-life states.
Eight states — California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington — have shield laws explicitly protecting doctors who prescribe chemical abortions to patients in other states.
Fifteen others offer at least some protection from pro-life states’ investigations.
Of the 95,710 abortions prescribed or performed nationwide in December, an estimated one-in-seven were prescribed to women in pro-life states by abortionists in shield law states, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of data collected by the Society of Family Planning.
Pro-Life Challenges to Shield Laws
Pro-life states are workshopping ways to circumvent shield laws in court.
Louisiana and Texas pursued state judgements against Maggie Carpenter, a New York mail order abortionist, earlier this year— but they proved impossible to enforce without New York’s cooperation.
Now, pro-life states are empowering individual citizens to sue out-of-state abortionists for wrongdoing.
In July, Texas father Jerry Rodriguez sued California abortionist Remy Coeytaux in federal court for the wrongful death of Rodriguez’ pre-born children. A federal judgement in favor of Rodriguez would effectively strip Coetytaux of California’s shield law protections.
A Louisiana law allowing citizens to sue out-of-state abortionists, and extending the statute of limitations on abortion lawsuits to five years, took effect earlier this month.
Prescription laws anonymizing abortionists make it harder to file lawsuits like these by hiding the offenders’ identity.
Daily Citizen is a news division of Focus on the Family that provides a faith-based perspective to counter the mainstream media’s anti-Christian bias.
