The Louisiana legislature on Thursday passed a bill that would designate the drugs used in the abortion pill, mifepristone and misoprostol, as controlled and dangerous substances, increasing the standard by which pregnant women could access the drugs.

Now headed to Republican governor Jeff Landry’s desk, the bill would add the drugs to the list of Schedule IV drugs under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law. The Republican-controlled legislature approved it in a 64-29 vote after over an hour of debate.

Existing Louisiana law prohibits procedural and chemical abortions except in cases of a medical emergency or to save the life of the mother. The reclassification of the abortion drugs started as an amendment from Republican state senator Thomas Pressly, who collaborated with Louisiana Right to Life on the measure.

S.B. 276 more broadly created the crime of coerced abortion by means of fraud, defined as “when a person knowingly and intentionally engages in the use or attempted use of an abortion-inducing drug on a pregnant woman, without her knowledge or consent, to cause an abortion.”

Those found in violation of the law can be imprisoned for no fewer than five and no more than ten years, fined not less than ten thousand nor more than seventy-five thousand dollars, or both. The penalties are steeper for fines and length of prison sentence for those involved in the nonconsensual use of an abortion drug on a pregnant woman if the unborn child is over three months of gestational age. Pregnant women are exempt from prosecution.

Pressly said he added the amendment to “control the rampant illegal distribution of abortion-inducing drugs,” according to a statement obtained by the Washington Post. “By placing these drugs on the controlled substance list, we will assist law enforcement in protecting vulnerable women and unborn babies.”

Abortion by pill is increasingly popular, according to a March study from the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study showed a large increase in the demand for self-managed abortions, measured by the number of chemical pills ordered, outside formal medical settings after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022. Medical abortions accounted for just over half of all abortions in the U.S. in 2020, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.

The Supreme Court in March heard oral arguments in Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a case dealing with recent FDA policy changes that expand access to chemical-abortion drugs. The lawsuit challenges the FDA’s initial decision to approve mifepristone, the first medication taken as part of the medication abortion drug regime, and its inclusion of misoprostol in the medication abortion regimen. Represented by the religious-liberty nonprofit Alliance Defending Freedom, the physician plaintiffs contend that the FDA’s deregulation of abortion drugs caused doctors to suffer injuries, including forced participation in elective abortion and treatment of abortion-drug complications.

In 2021, the FDA eliminated the in-office doctor’s visit requirement for receiving abortion drugs and subsequently allowed the mailing of abortion drugs without a prior examination. The plaintiffs argue that removing those safeguards yielded an explosion of women needing unplanned medical care. The FDA’s own label for mifepristone and misoprostol reports that about one in 25 women who take the drug will end up in the emergency room.