BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (LifeSiteNews) — The Louisiana Senate unanimously passed legislation Tuesday to criminalize giving a pregnant woman abortion-inducing drugs without her knowledge or consent, motivated by the personal ordeal of the lead sponsor’s own sister.
Abortion is generally illegal in the Bayou State, but SB 276 would establish the additional crime of “coerced criminal abortion by means of fraud,” defined as “knowingly and intentionally engag(ing) in the use or attempted use of an abortion-inducing drug on a pregnant woman, without her knowledge or consent, to cause an abortion.” Violators would be punishable by a minimum 10-year prison sentence and/or a minimum fine of $50,000.
The Shreveport Times reported that the bill was introduced by Republican state Sen. Thomas Pressly, motivated by the ordeal of his sister, Catherine Pressly Herring. In February, her then-husband Mason Herring pleaded guilty to spiking her drinking water with abortion pills, causing her to become seriously ill. Her baby daughter, Josephine, was saved via abortion pill reversal, but still has health complications stemming from her premature birth.
The situation occurred in Texas, where Mason Herring received only a six-month jail sentence, which Catherine and her brother hope to keep from being repeated in Louisiana.
“It’s clear to me that six months in jail isn’t punishment enough for committing this crime,” Pressly said. “Our family doesn’t believe justice was served in my sister’s case.” The senator said his legislation “can help prevent it from happening to someone else in the future.”
National Right to Life News reported that SB 276 passed the Senate unanimously this week. It now goes to the state House for consideration.
“We are thankful that SB 276 passed overwhelmingly on the Senate floor,” Louisiana Right to Life executive director Benjamin Clapper said. “Herring’s case is an illustration of the current crisis that perpetrators can so easily acquire abortion pills with intent to kill their unborn child without their partner’s knowledge or consent. The act of Herring’s former husband was an act of domestic violence and should be punishable by law enforcement. We look forward to working toward final passage in the House of Representatives.”
Despite the abortion lobby’s framing of abortion as a matter of “choice,” it has long turned a blind eye to abortion coercion, which is a popular tool for covering up and perpetuating sexual abuse.
The pro-life group Live Action’s “Aiding Abusers” series draws on news reports, eyewitness testimony, and undercover video to expose Planned Parenthood employees’ willingness to provide abortions to girls as young as 12 without reporting signs of statutory or forcible rape to law enforcement. This enables the men who brought the girls in for appointments to bring them home and continue abusing them.
Last year, the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute released a study that interviewed 1,000 American women and found that 61% of women who undergo abortions do so due to pressure from “male partners, family members, other persons, financial concerns, and other circumstances.”
“Forcing a woman to have an abortion, including a minor, is illegal in all 50 states of the United States of America,” according to the Justice Foundation’s Center Against Forced Abortions, which offers a variety of information resources to help those who are being pressured into killing their babies.