Penalties for forced abortions receive bipartisan support in Louisiana

Catherine Herring is a mom of three and an Etsy shop owner who can tell you that the abortion drug misoprostol does not dissolve in water. She knows this from experience: she saw it in a plastic cream-colored cup full of water that her husband gave her when she was pregnant with their third child in 2022.

That attempt to cause an abortion without Herring’s knowledge or consent is the impetus behind a bill that the Louisiana Senate passed on Apr. 16. It creates the crime of coerced criminal abortion by means of fraud. The purpose of the bill is to deter third parties from using abortive drugs to kill the unborn child of an unsuspecting pregnant mom. Even though connected with the politically volatile topic of abortion, the bill passed unanimously in the chamber, revealing a rare area of agreement on the issue. But the legislation does not fix the deeper problem of the unregulated market of abortion pills that leaves women like Herring and their unborn children open to this abuse.

It was spring break, and Herring was still wearing her pajamas and in bed when her husband, Mason, arrived at their home in Houston, Texas. He had recently asked for a separation and wasn’t living with Herring and their two children at the time. But, that morning in March 2022, he brought a biscuit and a cup of water to her in bed.

It all seemed a little weird, but she didn’t think much of it until Mason’s demeanor became angry and he began urging her to drink faster, saying he wasn’t leaving until she drank the whole thing. That’s when she looked at the bottom of the cup and noticed that the water was cloudy. She asked what the drink was. But he quickly left, taking the cup with him. In about 30 minutes, Herring became sick with uncontrollable diarrhea. At first she thought it was food poisoning, but then when the symptoms continued, “I just knew that something was in that drink,” she said.

Soon she noticed blood and went to the emergency room. Herring continued bleeding even after she left the hospital that evening, but she had been able to confirm through an ultrasound that the baby was alive.

After that, over a span of more than a month, Mason gave Herring six additional suspicious drinks that she did not ingest. Instead, she kept them as samples that she eventually submitted to the police. She also discovered blister packs labeled “Cyrux,” the Mexican pharmacy version of the abortion drug Cytotec, which has misoprostol as its main ingredient. And, with the help of a private investigator, she captured video of Mason emptying the contents of a Ziploc bag into a drink of cranberry juice and water. Officials confirmed the presence of the drug misoprostol in at least two of the drinks. Police arrested him at the end of May.

A grand jury indicted Mason in November 2022. He took a plea deal and, this February, received a sentence of 180 days in jail and 10 years’ probation. Herring told the court the sentence was not sufficient punishment for seven attempts on the life of her daughter—now a 1-year-old who suffers from health complications related to her premature birth.

In March, Louisiana Sen. Thomas Pressly introduced the bill establishing stricter punishments for coerced criminal abortion by fraud: anywhere from 5 to 20 years imprisonment and a fine of $10,000 to $100,000, depending on the gestational age of the baby, since chemical abortions farther along in pregnancy bring increased complications for the mother. Pressly is Herring’s brother and had been in contact with Herring throughout the abortion attempts in 2022. They sat next to one another in a Senate committee hearing on Apr. 9 as Herring shared her testimony.

“As a society, we can’t allow such insignificant sentences for attempted murder of children or felony assaults of women, especially pregnant women, because if the punishment is not significant enough, it won’t be a deterrent,” Herring said later in an interview with WORLD. “One hundred eighty days is not a deterrent from trying to murder your child.”

Erica Inzina with Louisiana Right to Life, a state pro-life group that worked with Pressly to craft the bill, said that an attempt to abort an unborn baby without a mother’s knowledge could possibly be punishable as attempted homicide. But she noted the high burden of proving that type of crime and the enforcement problems that could arise if, for instance, a prosecutor is unwilling to pursue that charge for political or ideological reasons. She said this legislation, if passed, would serve as another tool “in a prosecutor’s toolkit” that would ensure the perpetrator doesn’t get away with an unjustly light conviction or sentence.

It also goes beyond existing law in Louisiana that penalizes pressuring a woman into an abortion that she undergoes knowingly.

Even though Inzina noted that there is a strong pro-life presence in the state legislature, she said she was personally surprised by the unanimous support for the bill in the Senate, given the divisive nature of the abortion issue.

“I maybe would have expected at least one dissenter just out of strict adherence to the party,” she said, adding that pro-life and pro-abortion views tend to fall along party lines. But she said the broad support shows the widespread agreement that nobody should be subjected to a drug without his or her knowledge.

“I think when you’re talking personal stories . . . it’s hard to vote against it,” said Pressly. He said he believes the fact that even pro-abortion senators supported the legislation shows that what happened to his sister is not only a life issue but a women’s issue. “The vast availability of . . . misoprostol and other chemically inducing abortion pills are dangerous for them to be out in the public,” Pressly said. “And I think regardless of what side of the life issue that you’re on, I think people are cognizant of those challenges and want to do what they can to ensure that they’re not used in a forced abortion-type setting.”

He said the House will take up the bill in committee on April 30. He said he expects strong bipartisan support in that chamber as well, although the legislation could face more questioning on the House floor than it did in the Senate.

Herring’s experience is not an isolated incident. In June, a Tampa Bay news outlet covered the story of a woman who gave abortion pills to her ex-boyfriend, bribing him with AirPods to secretly give the pills to her pregnant rival. The next month, local news in Albany, N.Y., reported the arrest of a man accused of drugging a woman with an abortion drug without her knowledge and causing the miscarriage of her baby. Yet these stories and Herring’s have received little to no coverage from national media.

Inzina noted that the stories are coming at the same time as the contentious U.S. Supreme Court case involving the Food and Drug Administration’s lax regulations on abortion pills—and a national election.

“Anything can tip the scales to one side or the other,” she said, saying she wasn’t surprised the stories weren’t receiving more attention. “It does cause concern and raise questions about how a man is able to access prescription drugs like this. And if a man can do it, can a kid do it? Can an abuser do it? Can anyone do it? And you know, who all is vulnerable? How many times has this happened before? How many times is this happening every single day? We don’t have any idea.”

While Pressly’s bill would enact penalties with the hope of deterring perpetrators from using these abortive drugs against a pregnant woman’s knowledge, it wouldn’t solve the problem of the influx of abortion pills in states like Texas and Louisiana, where babies are technically protected from abortion starting at conception. Inzina acknowledged abortion pills can still come into the state through the mail from online abortion pill distributors.

Inzina said Louisiana Right to Life would support legislation to solve this problem but noted that the state already has a law on the books prohibiting selling or distributing abortion pills. “What we have is an enforcement issue,” she said. “And that’s very tricky, because if you think about it practically, to find someone guilty of that, someone has to come forward to say, ‘I took an abortion pill.’” Even though there are no penalties for a woman who takes an abortion pill, Inzina said this sort of admission is unlikely.

Pressly said he and other lawmakers have discussed legislative solutions to this problem but wouldn’t go into details, adding that they’re still in the process of determining the best strategy.

In the meantime, Herring said she has been encouraged to see how both sides of the abortion issue have united on her brother’s legislation. “We can’t fix every issue in this world,” she said. “But we can start here. And we can all agree on this.”