S. 2955 — Forced Abortion Prevention and Accountability Act

This section establishes a new offense in 18 U.S.C. §1532 prohibiting whoever, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly and intentionally administers to a pregnant woman an abortion-inducing drug (i.e., mifepristone or misoprostol) without her informed consent, with penalties of a fine, imprisonment for not more than 25 years, or both; applies the same penalties to attempts and conspiracies (including selling, shipping, mailing, or giving such a drug without reasonable measures to ensure the recipient is a pregnant woman seeking an abortion); and imposes an additional term of imprisonment for not more than 25 years if the administration results in serious bodily injury or death to the woman. The section further provides a civil remedy allowing an affected woman to sue for objectively verifiable monetary damages (psychological and physical), statutory damages equal to three times the cost of injuries, punitive damages, and reasonable attorney's fees (with fees awarded to a prevailing defendant if the suit is frivolous). The section also makes clerical amendments to add the new section to the table of sections for chapter 74 and revises the chapter heading from "Partial-birth abortions" to "Abortions" (in both the chapter and the table of chapters for part I of title 18). (As background, chapter 74 previously contained only the prohibition on partial-birth abortions in §1531.)