In yet another advance of abortion absolutism, California doctors may now prescribe the chemical abortion pill mifepristone anonymously, allowing pharmacists to fill the dangerous drug with neither the doctor nor the patient listed, according to a bill (AB 260) signed into law Friday by California Governor Gavin Newsom (D). Aimed largely at the Trump administration and pro-life states, the real effect of the legislation is to harm the vulnerable women exploited by the abortion industry, proving yet again that abortion is not health care.

According to AB 260, “a pharmacist may, at their discretion, dispense brand name or generic mifepristone or any drug used for medication abortion without the name of the patient as required … the name of the prescriber as required … or the name and address of the pharmacy as required …” so long as “the prescription is labeled with a prescription number or other means of identifying the prescription.”

This exception comes in subsection (g) of California Business and Professions Code Section 4076. The requirements it references are spelled out in subsection (a), paragraphs (3), (4), and (6), respectively. Subsection (a) begins, “A pharmacist shall not dispense a prescription except in a container that meets the requirements of state and federal law and is correctly labeled with all of the following.”

In other words, AB 260 amended California law to ensure that abortion drugs were not subjected to the same labeling requirements as any other drugs dispensed by a pharmacist. As a failsafe, the law does require pharmacists to keep a record of the transactions, but it strictly limits the availability of such records to law enforcement.

AB 260 also included language acting as a “shield law” for abortion businesses. It exempted anyone with a role in the entire production chain (“manufacture, transport, distribution, delivery, receipt, acquisition, sale, possession, furnishment, dispensation, repackaging, or storage”) of abortion pills from “criminal, civil, professional discipline, or licensing action” related to their actions.

This change is significant because doctors in states as far away as Washington, New York, and Massachusetts “rely on California pharmacies to ship the medication,” reports Newsweek, which means California’s law change allows abortion pill anonymity laws in other states to have a practical effect. New York, Maine, Vermont, and Washington have all enacted laws allowing abortion businesses to take their names off of abortion pill prescriptions, and Massachusetts also allows prescribers to do so.

The primary intent of California’s “shield law,” and its anonymity addendum, is to undermine laws in other states that protect the lives of unborn babies, as well as the health of the mothers. It effectively nullifies “the laws of another state or federal actions that interfere” with California’s anonymous, interstate abortion commerce by declaring such laws “against the public policy of this state.”

“The trend of ultra-liberal, culture-of-death states passing legislation to allow abortionists to anonymously prescribe mifepristone began after the states of Louisiana and Texas sought justice,” explained Mary Szoch, director of FRC’s Center for Human Dignity, “for a minor who was coerced into taking mifepristone and ended up in the emergency room and a Texas mother who also landed in the emergency room after hemorrhaging following the use of mifepristone.”

Both cases involved abortion pills prescribed by a doctor based in New York state. “The states of Texas and Louisiana sought justice for these women,” Szoch continued. “But the response of New York Governor Kathy Hochul [D] was not to help these women, but instead to pass a law allowing for anonymous prescribing of the abortion drug, making it more difficult — or perhaps impossible — for any woman to ever bring an abortionist who recklessly sent mifepristone through the mail to justice.”

Both cases also involved a woman harmed by taking abortion pills shipped through the mail, without any in-person consultation, ultrasound to check gestational age, or other safeguards to protect the woman from well-known, serious side effects, said Szoch.

As suggested above, California’s law also sought to counteract federal policy. In a brief legislative finding section, AB 260 observed that “Recent federal action and litigation has raised uncertainty about the continued availability nationwide of mifepristone.” After widespread public pressure to review the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary recently confirmed that the Trump administration will conduct such a review.

The Trump administration has been reluctant to wade into the abortion debate, but large, recent datasets show that the abortion pill can cause serious complications in 11% of women who take it — enough to throw doubt on any drug, or at least reapply safeguards surrounding its use. Indeed, pro-life groups like the California Family Council raised this scientific data to the attention of the California legislature, but this fact failed to halt the passage of the bill.

AB 260 passed with language not only protecting abortion businesses from the laws of other states, but also protecting them from penalties if they administer abortion pills not approved by the FDA, or in a way contrary to the FDA’s safety regulations, knowns as “risk evaluation and mitigation strategies” (REMS).

This is emphatically not the way that normal medical procedures are treated. States do not legislate comprehensive liability protections for doctors who prescribe other drugs. Indeed, the state of California admitted as much by passing a law that carved out an exception for abortion drugs from the general prescription labelling requirements that govern all other prescriptions.

This double standard was evident from the very first sentence of Newsom’s press release, “In a significant effort to advance reproductive freedom, Governor Gavin Newsom today signed legislation to protect access to essential reproductive care and help shield health care providers, patients, and lawyers from adverse legal action.”

The normal way to protect the rights of patients is to provide an avenue to recoup damages for injuries caused by malpractice. Instead, Newsom and the California legislature have done the opposite, shielding abortion businesses from liability, and preventing potential victims from even knowing the name of the person who prescribed the harmful drug. California is “leaving women to suffer with serious life-threatening complications that may have resulted from abuse, and guarding the wallets of the abortion industry instead,” said Szoch.

Even pro-abortion health care professionals will grant the basic arguments against California’s law. “Patient names have historically been on prescriptions and packaging to safeguard safety and prevent misuse and abuse,” said Harvard Medical School professor Ameet Sarpatwari. American Pharmacists Association Vice President Brigid Groves also saw a slippery slope. “The concern is, if we start this process or this exclusion for one class of medications, how far does that go?” Yet both professionals declined to go on the record condemning California’s abortion “shield law.”

The reason why Newsom and the California legislature have decided to treat abortion pills unlike any other drug is that they are playing politics, not health care. Newsom’s actions and schedule seem calculated as a wind up for a 2028 presidential campaign. At the end of Newsom’s press release, the governor listed out 13 pro-abortion actions his California has taken, stretching back for years. In other words, he seems less concerned about whether any particular bill he passes is good policy, than about how it can be used to burnish his pro-abortion credentials or — even more desirable among his target audience — position himself as the foremost opponent of Donald Trump and the Republicans.

The basic problem with Newsom’s stand is that it allows abortion businesses to evade federal law and the laws of other states with impunity. “The Trump administration cannot allow pro-abortion states to continue to trample on women and on the rights of pro-life states,” Szoch urged. “The Comstock Act, which prevents the mailing of abortion drugs, must be enforced.”

Editor’s Note: Why Is This News Biblically Relevant?

Despite claiming to be “champions of women’s rights,” the abortion industry has a long history of misrepresenting the scientific reality of life in the womb and the health risks to the mother associated with abortion.

Ken Ham, Founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis, highlighted the deceitful nature of the abortion debate, writing: “Jesus called Satan the father of lies and said that the devil’s followers are just like him—they lie by nature (John 8:44). So it shouldn’t be any surprise to us as believers when the secular world consistently obscures the truth and outright lies to push their cause. And this is perhaps nowhere more obvious than in the abortion debate.”

Franklin Graham, commenting on the FDA’s decision to make the abortion pill available through the postal system, referred to the actions as “Murder by mail.”

“Abortion supporters try to make it sound more acceptable and less barbaric by saying that it ‘terminates a pregnancy,’” Graham described. “But medication abortions, as they are called, are just another way to deliberately end the life of an unborn child—and that should be called what it is—murder.”

“Pray that the minds and hearts of people across our nation would be awakened to the great sin and heartbreak of abortion,” he implored.