ALBANY (LifeSiteNews) — New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul has signed legislation further strengthening a new law earlier this year to help abortionists hide their identities, now requiring pharmacies to comply with requests to keep their names off of prescription labels.
As covered by LifeSiteNews in February, Hochul signed a law that allows doctors who prescribe abortion drugs to omit their names from prescription drug labels destined for pregnant women in what she considers to be “hostile states,” following a Louisiana grand jury’s indictment of a New York doctor for prescribing abortifacients for a minor in violation of Louisiana law. The minor was coerced into the abortion and ended up in the hospital due to health complications.
Specifically, the law “allow[s] prescribers to ask that the dispensing pharmacy print the name of their practice instead of their personal names on the prescription labels for mifepristone, misoprostol and generic alternatives,” Hochul said at the time.
On March 22, Hochul’s office announced the signing of a follow-up law. Whereas the previous law stated that the “prescription label for mifepristone, misoprostol, and their generic alternatives may include the name of the dispensing health care practice instead of the name of the dispenser,” the new version allows the option to include only the address, instead of the name of the abortionist or the name of his practice.
“New York State is standing up to anti-choice zealots who threaten the sanctity of women’s health care [i.e., the murder of the unborn] and the medical professionals who provide it,” Hochul declared.
READ: Dear RFK Jr: The FDA is harming women by pretending the abortion pill is ‘safe’
Easy access to and interstate distribution of abortion pills is one of the abortion lobby’s most potent tools for perpetuating abortion-on-demand post-Roe v. Wade, which they are aggressively pursuing regardless of the risks to the women they are supposedly serving. In November 2022, Operation Rescue reported that a net decrease of 36 abortion facilities in 2022 led to the lowest number in almost 50 years, yet the chemical abortion business “surged” with 64 percent of new facilities built last year specializing in dispensing mifepristone and misoprostol.
This is despite the fact that a 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.”
Pro-lifers warn that with the Biden administration completely eliminating requirements that abortion pills be taken in the presence of a medical professional, meaning without any medical supervision or medical support close by, those events are certain to increase.
“A November 2021 study by Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” writes Catholic University of America research associate Michael New. “They analyzed state Medicaid data of over 400,000 abortions from 17 states that fund elective abortions through their Medicaid programs. They found that the rate of abortion-pill-related emergency-room visits increased over 500 percent from 2002 through 2015. The rate of emergency-room visits for surgical abortions also increased during the same time period, but by a much smaller margin.’”
In November 2024, New York voters approved Proposition 1, a so-called “Equal Rights Amendment” adding “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy,” as protected classes to the state constitution’s “equal protection” clause.
