House lawmakers are deliberating sending a bill to Gov. Tate Reeves that would make it illegal for doctors to prescribe medication that could be used to induce abortion to patients in Mississippi.
Rep. Celeste Hurst, a Republican from Sandhill, said the intent of the legislation, which she introduced through an amendment to a drug trafficking bill, is to keep abortion medication, such as mifepristone and misoprostol, from entering Mississippi. The amendment would subject prescribers to no less than one year in prison.
“There’s no oversight on this drug right now,” Hurst told Mississippi Today Wednesday. “Anyone, male or female, could fill out a form and have that drug shipped to them. A human trafficker could put it in a woman’s hot cocoa.”
Under the legislation, however, Mississippi could prosecute doctors. Currently, Mississippi doctors can prescribe the medications for purposes other than abortion. The legislation won’t technically change that, but experts say it will make doctors scared to prescribe certain drugs for non-abortion purposes.
The legislation specifies that doctors will be prosecuted only if they prescribe drugs, whose uses include inducing an abortion, with the intention of inducing an abortion. But intent is hard to prove, said Mary Ziegler, an expert on abortion law and a professor at University of California at Davis’ School of Law. If passed, the law could have a chilling effect on health care providers, making them more hesitant to prescribe medication in clinical settings for conditions other than abortion.
Rep. Celeste Hurst, a Republican from Sandhill, comments during a meeting of the House Education Freedom Select Committee at the State Capitol on Sept. 25, 2025, in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“The possibility of a misunderstanding or a false accusation is going to be intimidating to a lot of physicians,” Ziegler said.
Mississippi already has a near total ban on abortions, but lawmakers have been unable to stop residents from ordering pills online from states where abortion is legal. Experts say this proposed legislation won’t stop them, either, but it might hurt Mississippians in life-threatening situations.
Mifepristone and misoprostol, the most common form of abortion medication, have been proven safe and effective in terminating pregnancy. But these medications are also used to induce labor, stop postpartum hemorrhaging, and for conditions such as miscarriages, or early pregnancy loss.
In reality, the proposed law “almost certainly” will have no impact on out-of-state providers, Ziegler said. Shield laws protect abortion providers, patients and helpers from out-of-state investigations, lawsuits and prosecutions in 22 states and Washington D.C.
“If governors in places like New York refuse to extradite their doctors, it’s not clear that Mississippi would be able to do anything about that,” Ziegler said.
Even before the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion, in-person abortions were very limited in Mississippi. Instead, women in the state have used mail-order abortion medication as an alternative. A 2020 study that examined more than 6,000 requests from U.S. residents for abortion pills from an online telemedicine service in 2017 and 2018 found that Mississippians requested the pills at a higher rate than people in any other state.
In 2024, Louisiana passed a similar law. Dana Sussman, senior vice president at Pregnancy Justice, a group that defends the rights of pregnant people, said the law has created fear among health care providers. She said Louisiana doctors have been practicing drills ensuring they have enough time to run between patient rooms and storerooms where the medications are now kept under lock and key.
Hurst told Mississippi Today she does not want to limit the use of drugs such as mifepristone and misoprostol in situations where they are medically necessary, including during a miscarriage.
“If a doctor gave that medication for an abortion, they would be doing a criminal act,” Hurst said. “But if they prescribed it for something that is not abortion-inducing, then there’s nothing in that law, or in current law, that would prohibit them from doing that.”
But Sussman said that lawmakers’ intent has very little bearing on how laws are enforced.
“If the law is broader than what her intent is, then it will have far-reaching consequences that she may not want to be responsible for,” Sussman said.
Senators accepted the House’s amendment on abortion medication and sent the bill back to the House, where lawmakers can advance it to the governor, or call for further negotiations with the Senate.
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