An OB-GYN on a prominent state panel said there are "misconceptions" about how much the drugs used for medication abortions are also needed to treat other conditions. (Peter Dazeley/Getty Images)
A physician who also serves as the chief deputy coroner for Louisiana’s largest parish raised concerns about a new state law that will classify a drug used to treat miscarriages and ulcers as “dangerous” because it’s also used for abortions.
“There’s a lot of misconceptions about how that drug is used,” said OB-GYN Dr. Randall Brown, who oversees East Baton Rouge Parish’s sexual assault forensic examination program for the coroner’s office. “The great majority of times that drug is used to control bleeding. It has nothing to do with abortion or things like that.”
Brown spoke last week at a meeting of the Louisiana Sexual Assault Oversight Commission, where he served as the Louisiana State Coroner’s Association appointee. In Louisiana, elected coroners in local government oversee sexual assault medical examinations and the collection of evidence through what are commonly called rape kits.
Brown’s sentiment echoed those from hundreds of doctors expressed in letters written to legislators last spring opposing the drug’s reclassification.
Gov. Jeff Landry and state lawmakers in May approved a new law that requires two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, to be defined as Schedule IV controlled substances in Louisiana. It takes effect Oct. 1.
Doctors prescribe the two drugs to end pregnancy but also for several other conditions. The federal government first approved misoprostol for ulcer treatment, according to the Associated Press.
Brown said “100%” of the prescriptions he writes for misoprostol are related to keeping a patient’s bleeding under control. Even among OB-GYNs in other states who perform abortions, which are illegal in Louisiana, he estimated 90% of their prescriptions for misoprostol are to treat a condition other than an abortion.
When the law takes effect, Louisiana will require doctors to have additional certification to prescribe both drugs. Medical facilities and pharmacies will also have to take more precautions when storing the medications.
Those restrictions are in place for Schedule IV controlled substances because other drugs that receive this classification, such as valium, are addictive. Mifepristone and misoprostol are not, according to a letter the Louisiana Society of Addiction Medicine sent to legislative leadership last spring.
Conservative legislators said the drugs should be considered “dangerous” because they can be given to pregnant people without their knowledge.
The sponsor of the law, Sen. Thomas Pressly, R-Shreveport, brought the proposal on behalf of his sister, Catherine Herring, whose husband placed abortion medication in her drink at her Texas home without her knowledge. Mason Herring, a Houston attorney, was sentenced to 180 days in prison and 10 years of probation in February for that crime, according to the Associated Press.
At the commission meeting last week, Brown said the new law may end up being “no big deal” for doctors and patients as long as they are still able to access misoprostol at local pharmacies. But he fears the medication could become harder to find.
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“If it causes an impediment to getting those drugs because the pharmacy doesn’t want to stock it for a lot of other reasons,” Brown said, “that could reduce availability, and it has nothing to do with abortion.”
The doctor said pharmacies could become wary of carrying the drug for “publicity” reasons or simply not want to deal with filing the extra information required to track the prescriptions.
Brown’s comments about misoprostol came in the middle of a presentation from the attorney general’s office to the Sexual Assault Oversight Commission about new state laws staff believed would help victims of sexual assault. At the time, the attorney general’s office was highlighting the new abortion pill restrictions as a win for abuse survivors.
Earlier in the meeting, Morgan Lamandre, CEO of Sexual Trauma Awareness & Response (STAR), the biggest advocacy organization for sexual assault victims in the state, pushed back on another new law the attorney general’s staff characterized as helpful.
Lamandre, who is also on the commission, objected to a statute that will restrict public facilities transgender people can use, starting Aug. 1. It requires transgender people to use bathrooms, changing rooms, locker rooms and sleeping quarters that don’t align with their gender. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
“I do disagree with the characterization that [the law] is to prevent sexual assault,” Lamandre told the commission. “I don’t believe it is or will protect from sexual assault and harassment.”
Amanda Tonkovich, the commission member representing the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault, agreed with Lamandre and believes transgender people and others who don’t conform to gender stereotypes could be at greater risk under the incoming law.
Transgender people are more than four times as likely to be the victim of a violent crime when compared with the cisgender population, according to a study from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law released in 2021.
Tonkovich, a social worker who treats trauma victims and a former member of Louisiana’s Crime Victims Reparations Board, said she knows of females who had been attacked in women-only bathrooms because people mistook them for men or thought they were too masculine.
“I think anything that puts a target on anybody makes them more vulnerable to sexual violence,” she said.
Sen. Beth Mizell, R-Franklinton, a commission member who helped pass Louisiana’s new transgender restrictions, disagreed and said she believes the law will protect women from being attacked in places such as public restrooms. It was the intention behind passing the new statute, she said.