This week, a harrowing new report in the Louisiana Illuminator found Louisiana hospitals are already pulling misoprostol—a life-saving medication used for abortion and other pregnancy care—off birthing carts, weeks before a law to criminalize the medication is set to take effect.
The World Health Organization recognizes misoprostol as an essential medication to stop life-threatening postpartum hemorrhaging (a leading cause of maternal mortality), and also to treat chronic tinnitus in patients with diabetes or hypertension. So the stakes are actually life or death. But because misoprostol is also used to facilitate medication abortions, in May, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) signed a law that classifies it as a “controlled dangerous substance.” The law—which compounds with the state's total abortion ban—threatens those who possess it without a prescription with up to 20 years in prison. But, due to a lack of clarity from the state, doctors are preemptively getting rid of it out of an abundance of caution.
When confronted about Louisiana abortion laws, Landry's response was utterly removed from reality. Speaking to journalist Lorena O’Neil for Rolling Stone, Landry expressed dismay with the “criticism” he faces—specifically, for enacting laws that medical experts and pregnant people say are endangering their lives. “Governors get criticized for being dictators, for being kings,” he said. But, he continued, “I’ve tried to allow these issues to percolate through the legislature. I will tell you Louisiana’s laws are pretty solid in respecting women and the decision between their doctor and themselves.” Landry wrote off the new barriers that pregnant people face to receive life-saving medical care as a mere “kerfuffle” and said it’s “absolutely not true” that Louisiana's abortion laws bar people from being able to get essential care. In 2019, Louisiana’s Health Department ranked the state 47th out of 48 states on maternal mortality for Black women.
In May, 250 Louisiana doctors wrote a letter to state Rep. Thomas Pressley (R), who wrote the bill to criminalize misoprostol and the other common abortion medication, mifepristone, warning of the threat his law posed to the state's already abysmal maternal mortality rate. “Given its historically poor maternal health outcomes, Louisiana should prioritize safe and evidence-based care for pregnant women.” One doctor, who works at a rural hospital in the state, said they weren't even aware the law was set to take effect until the Illuminator asked them about it. “What? That’s terrifying,” the doctor told the publication. “Take it off the carts? That’s death. That’s a matter of life or death.”
At the Democratic National Convention in August, a Black woman from Louisiana named Kaitlyn Joshua gave a speech, recounting how two Louisiana hospitals jeopardized her life by denying her care for her miscarriage because they feared being prosecuted under Louisiana’s criminal abortion bans.
Louisiana doctors told the Illuminator that hospitals are now scrambling to determine how to save a pregnant person’s life if they start hemorrhaging. Once the new law goes into effect, if a pregnant woman is hemorrhaging and needs misoprostol, a doctor would have to wait to get approval from a pharmacy, which obviously takes a lot longer than the very few minutes you have to save someone if they're hemorrhaging. One doctor told the outlet that they’ve worked at rural hospitals where “trying to get a simple headache medication released” has “taken 45 minutes,” especially in cases where a hospital doesn't have its own pharmacy. “In these [hemorrhage] situations, you don’t have 45 minutes,” the doctor said.
Landry’s other comments to RS were just as ridiculous, and included defending his record of signing legislation to require the Ten Commandments be posted in classrooms: “The Ten Commandments are the fabric of civilization and you’re telling me, we can’t hang them in school?”
“Democracy doesn’t say the majority has to sit in the back and listen to what the minority says, because the minority have some feelings that have been hurt,” he added, the majority he's referring to being Christians. Those who disagree can simply leave, he told O’Neil: “The government doesn’t keep them from going somewhere else.” It’s a line that’s been echoed by anti-abortion politicians for years now—that those who don’t like their state’s abortion laws can simply leave or move to live somewhere else. First, that isn’t true for many people. Second, Republican officials and anti-abortion activists are increasingly trying to weaponize the law to trap individuals under their states' abortion laws. The same day Landry’s Rolling Stone interview was published, Texas filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration to block a rule that would protect out-of-state abortion patients from having their medical files accessed by police.
Landry’s extreme, far-right agenda is unlikely to stop within Louisiana’s borders—whether it’s his abortion laws or his Ten Commandments bullshit. As political scientist Norman Ornstein told O’Neil, “The other damage he could do is simply by example. If Landry gets away with the Ten Commandments, others are going to do it. It’s setting examples as much as anything. [The damage] cascades.”
