Missouri Senate Corrects "Error" on Limiting Prescription of Abortion Drugs
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 30, 2008
Jefferson City, MO (LifeNews.com) — The Missouri Senate corrected an error in a drug bill on Tuesday after "mistakenly" voting to put restrictions on the dangerous abortion drug RU 486. The drug has been responsible for the deaths of seven women in the United States and injuring more than 1,200, according to FDA statistics.
When the Missouri House approved a bill that put information about drug prescriptions into a database for monitoring abuses, the House bill put the abortion drug into the wrong category.
RU 486 was included along with narcotics such as LSD and marijuana as ones that can’t be prescribed by a physician.
The abortion drug, also known as mifepristone, is not technically prescribed, but is administered by an abortion practitioner for women wanting an alternative to surgical abortions early in pregnancy.
The error was supposed to have been fixed in the Senate version of the bill. It was initially corrected in committee but the error was reinserted at some point before senators approved the bill on Wednesday.
The Missouri Senate unanimously approved the drug bill before realizing their mistake, but later voted to reconsider the legislation, fix the error, and pass the bill anew.
The measure now goes back to the House for its approval.
Sam Lee, of the pro-life group Campaign Life Missouri, explained that the decision to include the abortion drug in the non-prescription category was not one from pro-life groups.
He told LifeNews.com pro-life groups in Missouri did not ask legislators to keep the drug in the category later in the legislative process. Still, he said he would have been happy and surprised if the bill had gone to the governor with the mistake in it and had been signed into law.
Had that happened, it’s possible the abortion drug could never become one that could be obtained through a prescription that a woman could fill at a local pharmacy.
Some pro-life advocates elsewhere in the nation have been concerned that pro-abortion groups will eventually lobby to have the RU 486 abortion drug available via prescription.
