A Wyoming Senate committee took action Wednesday to protect mothers and unborn babies from dangerous abortion drugs.
In a 4-1 vote, the state Senate Labor, Health and Social Services Committee advanced Senate File 109, which would ban drugs used for the purpose of killing unborn babies in abortions.
Sponsored by Sen. Tim Salazar, R-Riverton, the bill states, “… no person shall manufacture, distribute, prescribe, dispense, sell, transfer or use any chemical abortion drug in the state for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion.” Exceptions are allowed in cases of rape, incest, miscarriages and when the mother’s life is at risk.
Violators could face up to six months in jail and up to $9,000 in fines; however, mothers cannot be prosecuted.
“The intent of SF 109 is to protect the unborn from chemicals that seek to destroy human life,” Salazar said in a statement to Students for Life Action. “By passing this legislation, Wyoming will make a clear statement that we wish to protect the unborn and women from these dangerous drugs that are used in the taking of an unborn child’s life through abortion.”
According to the Casper Star Tribune, the legislation has a better chance of passing this year after voters elected more pro-life Republicans to the state House in November. Last year, Salazar’s bill passed the Senate but did not advance in the House.
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During the committee hearing, Giovannina Anthony, an OB-GYN and abortionist in Jackson, objected to the legislation, arguing that the abortion drug misoprostol also is used in non-abortion situations such as labor induction and miscarriages, the Tribune reports.
Responding to her concerns, state Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, said the bill only prohibits the drugs when they are used for the purpose of killing unborn babies in abortions, according to the report.
Pro-life advocates with Students for Life Action also spoke out in support of the legislation.
“With Biden’s [abortion] pill-pushing FDA on the rise, we’re glad to have strong leaders like Senator Salazar who are fighting for the protection of women and children from deadly chemical abortion pills,” said Dustin Curtis, vice president of political affairs and operations for the organization.
Wyoming law bans abortions, but a judge recently blocked the law. The state is appealing.
The state Department of Health reported 98 abortions in 2021.
The drug mifepristone, typically used with a second drug, misoprostol, is used to abort more than half of all unborn babies in the U.S. every year, or nearly half a million, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
The FDA has linked mifepristone to at least 28 women’s deaths and 4,000 serious complications. However, under President Barack Obama, the FDA stopped requiring that non-fatal complications from mifepristone be reported. So the numbers almost certainly are much higher.
Studies indicate the risks are more common than what abortion activists often claim, with as many as one in 17 women requiring hospital treatment. A recent study by the Charlotte Lozier Institute found that the rate of abortion-related emergency room visits by women taking the abortion drug increased more than 500 percent between 2002 and 2015.
Another new study from the University of Toronto, “Short-Term Adverse Outcomes After Mifepristone–Misoprostol Versus Procedural Induced Abortion,” published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that one in ten women who took the abortion pill had to go to the emergency room, according to Pregnancy Help News.
In England, which began allowing mail-order abortion drugs around the same time as the U.S., new investigations show a huge increase in ambulance calls and reports of coercion and abuse. There also have been reports of late-term babies being born alive at home as a result of mail-order abortion drugs because their mothers did not realize how far along they were.
