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)).