“To amend title 18, United States Code, to prohibit chemical abortions, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section states the following congressional findings regarding the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval and regulation of chemical abortion drugs: (1) FDA approved such drugs in 2000, categorizing pregnancy as an illness and asserting therapeutic benefits; (2) in 2016, FDA reduced required doctor visits from three to one, eliminated in-person administration of misoprostol and follow-up appointments, and expanded gestational limit from seven to 10 weeks; (3) in 2021, FDA eliminated the in-person dispensing requirement, allowing mail dispensing; (4) chemical abortions have higher complication rates than surgical abortions, often miscoded as miscarriages; (5) such drugs comprised over 50% of induced abortions since 2000, per the Guttmacher Institute; and (6) chemical abortions carry four times the complication risk of surgical abortions.
This section establishes a new federal criminal offense (18 U.S.C. §1532) prohibiting any person from prescribing, dispensing, distributing, or selling a drug, medication, or chemical for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion, punishable by imprisonment for not more than 25 years, a fine under title 18, or both. The prohibition does not apply to (1) contraceptives administered before conception or confirmed pregnancy; (2) treatment of a miscarriage per accepted medical guidelines; or (3) cases certified by a physician as necessary to address a woman's life-endangering physical disorder, injury, illness, or condition arising from pregnancy. Women upon whom a chemical abortion is performed or attempted may not be prosecuted under the section, which defines "abortion" as intentionally terminating a known pregnancy other than to produce live birth, remove a dead fetus from miscarriage, or treat ectopic or molar pregnancy; "pregnancy" as the condition of having a living unborn child from fertilization to birth; and "unborn child" as a Homo sapiens organism from fertilization to live birth (as defined in 1 U.S.C. §8(b)).