Louisiana is about to become the first state to criminalize widely used abortion drugs

Louisiana is set to be the first state in the US to criminalize possession of widely used abortion drugs, with a bill that has alarmed abortion rights advocates and doctors across the state and drawn warnings from the White House.

State lawmakers have approved a bill to label mifepristone and misoprostol – drugs used in a two-drug protocol for medication abortion, the most common form of abortion care in the US – as controlled dangerous substances, in a category alongside Xanax and Valium.

Possession of the FDA-approved drugs without a prescription, in a state where abortion is already effectively outlawed altogether, could carry a penalty of 10 years in prison.

Louisiana’s Republican-controlled state Senate passed the measure by a vote of 29-7 on Thursday. The state’s GOP-controlled House overwhelmingly approved the bill on Tuesday.

Republican Governor Jeff Landry has indicated he will sign the bill into law.

A letter signed by more than 250 obstetrician-gynecologists, emergency room doctors and physicians from across the state urgently warned the bill’s author that, if signed into law, the measure would severely impact women’s healthcare in the state and delay potentially life-saving treatment.

Vice President Kamala Harris has called the legislation “absolutely unconscionable.”

The bill, drafted by anti-abortion group Louisiana Right to Life and sponsored by Republican state senator Thomas Pressly, will “assist law enforcement in protecting vulnerable women and unborn babies,” according to a statement from Mr Pressly.

Mifepristone was first approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration in most cases up to 10 weeks of pregnancy in 2000, when a vast majority of abortions occur, according to the US Centers for