Women in Alabama who take abortion pills to end their pregnancies can be prosecuted, Attorney General Steve Marshall told CBS News.
Marshall says these women can be prosecuted by the state even if the pills were prescribed from somewhere else in the country.
The federal government has made it easier to prescribe mifepristone and misoprostol, which are used for medical abortions.
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, Alabama issued an abortion ban, which targets providers. While that ban says people can’t be held criminally liable for getting an abortion, Marshall suggested to CBS News the state could instead prosecute under a 2006 law.
“The Human Life Protection Act targets abortion providers, exempting women ‘upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted to be performed’ from liability under the law,” Marshall said in a statement to CBS News. “It does not provide an across-the-board exemption from all criminal laws, including the chemical-endangerment law.”
That law makes it a crime to “knowingly, recklessly or intentionally cause or permit a child to be exposed to, to ingest or inhale, or to have contact with a controlled substance, chemical substance or drug paraphernalia.”
In 2013, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that the law, designed to protect children from exposure to illicit drugs, protected unborn children.
Marshall says that “promoting the remote prescription and administration of abortion pills endangers both women and unborn children.”
“Elective abortion — including abortion pills — is illegal in Alabama. Nothing about the Justice Department’s guidance changes that. Anyone who remotely prescribes abortion pills in Alabama does so at their own peril: I will vigorously enforce Alabama law to protect unborn life,” Marshall’s statement said.
Mifepristone and misoprostol are used in about half of all abortions in the U.S., but can also treat ailments like ulcers. The Justice Department, citing the pills’ other uses, said in a 21-page opinion that the pills can be mailed anywhere in the country.
— Information from CBS News
