(Washington) The lower house of parliament in Louisiana, a state in the south of the United States, passed on Tuesday a law qualifying the abortion pill as a “dangerous substance” whose access should therefore be restricted, a major societal issue at the heart of the presidential campaign.
Louisiana has banned almost all abortions since the United States Supreme Court struck down the federal guarantee of abortion in the summer of 2022. Since this reversal of jurisprudence, around twenty states have banned or severely restricted access to abortion.
The bill passed Tuesday by the Louisiana House of Representatives must still be approved by the State Senate as well as, if necessary, its governor.
It adds medications used in particular for abortion to the list of “dangerous substances” subject to strict control and whose possession without a medical prescription constitutes an offense.
According to the proposed law, possession without a medical prescription of misoprostol and mifepristone will therefore be punishable by five years of imprisonment and a fine of 5,000 dollars.
“Absolutely unacceptable,” reacted on X Vice-President Kamala Harris, campaigning on this theme for President Joe Biden, Democratic candidate for re-election against Republican Donald Trump.
“The Louisiana House of Representatives has just adopted a bill that would criminalize the possession of abortion pills, with penalties of up to several years of imprisonment,” she lambasted.
“Let’s be clear: it’s because of Donald Trump,” she added, the former president boasting of having been the architect of the turnaround of the Supreme Court, largely reshuffled under his mandate giving it a composition very conservative.
But since this shock decision, the conservatives have lost every referendum or vote addressing the question of abortion.
The Democrats are thus trying to make abortion one of the key issues in the November presidential election, believing that it is a way to win votes against the Republican billionaire.