You would be hard-pressed to find an American who lived through the 1970s and doesn’t remember the launch of President Nixon’s War on Drugs, a thinly veiled crusade against his political opponents and Black Americans. Presented as the cornerstone of Nixon’s purported public safety strategy, it’s now commonly acknowledged to have been nothing short of a social, economic and human rights disaster — with repercussions Americans are still experiencing today. But what does it have to do with abortion rights?
Louisiana’s governor recently signed into law a bill criminalizing the most common form of abortion care in America: medication abortion. This extreme new law categorizes mifepristone and misoprostol — the two medicines most commonly prescribed to induce abortions — as Schedule IV ‘dangerous and controlled substances,’ alongside Xanax and Valium. While the bill contains an exception for pregnant people found in possession of the medications, anyone else without a prescription can be charged with a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The above excerpt was originally published in Talking Points Memo.
Click here to view the full article.