Bill that would have placed the question of abortion access before Louisiana voters fails

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A bill that ultimately would have let voters decide whether abortions should be legal in Louisiana, a state with a near-total ban, failed after a Republican-controlled committee rejected it Monday.

The legislation proposed an amendment to Louisiana’s constitution that would enshrine reproductive rights for women, including allowing contraceptives such as birth control, access to abortions and infertility treatments. If the measure advanced, it would have been placed before Louisianans to vote on the amendment. However a GOP-controlled committee voted 10-2 to involuntarily defer the bill, effectively killing the measure.

“I don’t see this as a pro-abortion bill. I see this as a pro-medical treatment bill,” Democratic Rep. Aimee Freeman, who authored the legislation, said during a committee hearing Monday.

Louisiana has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the country, with Black women disproportionately impacted, according to state health data. Freeman argued that the amendment is essential to provide pregnant patients “full access to treatments.”

Louisiana’s abortion law went into effect in 2022 following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade after nearly a half-century of a nationwide right to abortion. The only exceptions to the prohibition are if there is substantial risk of death or impairment to the patient in continuing the pregnancy and in the case of “medically futile” pregnancies — when the fetus has a fatal abnormality.

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