[UNLOCKED] What’s in Ogles's bill to ban medication abortion?

Everything you need to know about U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles's bill to ban medication abortion nationwide.

Feb 10, 2025

This post, originally published on January 28, 2025, has been unlocked for all readers.

On Friday, January 24, 2025, U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R, Tenn) introduced a bill to ban medication abortion nationwide. The bill currently has eighteen Republican cosponsors. Ogles originally introduced the bill in 2023.

From spreading disinformation to placing arbitrary parameters on maternal care, from pushing Fetal Personhood to propagating bogus definitions that can later be used to ban hormonal contraception, Ogles’s ‘‘Ending Chemical Abortions Act’’ is a classic example of the gross incompetency and flagrant dishonesty that characterizes “pro-life” legislation.

So, let’s get into it.

What does the bill prohibit?

The bill prohibits, nationwide, the prescribing, dispensing, distributing, or selling of “any drug, medication, or chemical for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion on any woman.” This broad prohibition encompasses physicians, nurses, pharmacists, manufacturers, distributors, reproductive rights altruists who send or otherwise provide abortion medications to people in need, certain reproductive health groups based in the United States, and others.

What is the punishment?

“[W]hoever prescribes, dispenses, distributes, or sells, any drug, medication, or chemical for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion on any woman” will be imprisoned for up to 25 years or fined - or both. This means that, for example, reproductive rights helpers who send abortion medication to people in need could face up to 25 years in prison.

Will pregnant patients be prosecuted?

No. The bill states, “A woman upon whom a chemical abortion is performed or attempted may not be criminally prosecuted under this section.”

Are there exceptions?

On paper? Yes. The bill includes three exceptions:

“The sale, use, prescription or administration of any contraceptive agent administered before conception or before pregnancy can be confirmed through conventional testing.”
“The treatment of a miscarriage according to medical guidelines as accepted as of the date of the miscarriage.”
“In the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death.”

In practice? No. We already know that having an exception “on the books to get an abortion and getting one in practice are two distinctly different things.”1 “Exceptions function mainly as PR tools to make abortion bans seem less cruel than they are and [to] distract from the inhumanity of the ban itself.”2

“The same anti-abortion activists insisting they'd honor these phony ‘exceptions’ to abortion law are also currently pumping out endless propaganda insisting that women who have medically indicated abortions are liars. They especially hate Kate Cox, a Texas woman who had to travel out of state to abort a pregnancy because the fetus had a rare genetic disorder that usually kills the baby within a few days of birth. Cox's health was also imperiled, but because, like Miller, she hadn't yet reached death's door, the doctors couldn't legally justify it. Unlike [Candi] Miller, Cox got a legal and medically supervised abortion and survived. Her reward is she is now subject to relentless lies from anti-abortion groups denying that her abortion was medically necessary.”3

And how many pharmacists are going to be willing to risk 25 years in prison?

Are there exclusions?

Yes. While the bill does not include a definition for “chemical abortion” (the scare-term they use instead of “medication abortion”), it does include a definition for “abortion.” The bill’s definition of “abortion” includes a of list of three things that the bill’s authors exclude from their idea of what “abortion” is.

ABORTION.—The term ‘abortion’ means intentionally terminating the pregnancy of a woman known to be pregnant, with an intention other than—
‘(A) to produce a live birth;
‘(B) to remove a dead unborn child caused by miscarriage; or
‘(C) to treat an ectopic or molar pregnancy.

However, if you think that banning the prescribing, dispensing, distributing, or selling of “any drug, medication, or chemical for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion” won’t effect the availability of these drugs for one of the above named exclusions, you are sorely mistaken. To get from the manufacturers to the patients, these drugs have to pass through multiple people, each of whom may be more likely disrupt this chain when staring down a possible 25 year prison sentence.

It's also worth noting that removing “a dead unborn child” is only excluded from the bill’s definition of abortion if the death was “caused by miscarriage.” This conditional requirement is found in Georgia’s abortion ban and may have contributed to the preventable death of Amber Nicole Thurman.

How does the bill push Fetal Personhood?

The bill pushes Fetal Personhood through its use of anti-choice definitions, specifically the definitions for “pregnancy” and “unborn child.”

UNBORN CHILD.—The term ‘unborn child’ means an individual organism of the species homosapiens, beginning at fertilization, until the point of being born alive as defined in section 8(b) of title 1, United States Code.

The anti-choice definition of “unborn child” assigns the personhood to fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses. For years, anti-choice groups have been trying to insert Fetal Personhood language into legislation as part of a long-term strategy to establish grounds for courts to impose Fetal Personhood ideology.

The bill’s thoroughly religious conception of personhood is reinforced in the bill’s definition of pregnant/pregnancy.

PREGNANT; PREGNANCY.—The term ‘pregnant’ or ‘pregnancy’ refers to the human female reproductive condition of having a living unborn child within her body throughout the entire embryonic and fetal stages from fertilization to full gestation and childbirth.

Furthermore, this anti-choice definition actually alters the actual definition of pregnant/pregnancy. Pregnancy is “the state of carrying a developing embryo or fetus.”4“According to both the scientific community and long-standing federal policy, a woman is considered pregnant only when a fertilized egg has implanted in the wall of her uterus.”5 The process of implantation is completed around day 9 or 10 post-fertilization.6

Codifying a definition of pregnancy that includes having a fertilized egg floating through your body somewhere, before an actual pregnancy even begins, is a clever way of attacking birth control. Anti-choicers are constantly trying to re-define hormonal contraception and IUDs as abortifaciants, spreading disinformation claiming that hormonal contraceptives, such as emergency contraceptive pills, cause abortion or inhibit a fertilized egg from implanting into the uterus. That’s not how hormonal contraceptives work, but anti-choicers are unencumbered by factual evidence and have no allegiance to the truth.

By including an anti-choice definition of pregnancy that, if anti-choice groups successfully re-define hormonal contraception, would move hormonal contraception into the category of abortion, anti-choice groups can ban hormonal contraception without ever changing their laws (including this bill). In this way, anti-choice definitions often function as clever slights of hand.

What other disinformation does the bill include?

The bill falsely claims that the FDA “illegally categorized pregnancy as an illness.” This is nonsense.
“Anti-abortion leaders claim the FDA illegally approved mifepristone through an accelerated drug reviewal process known as Subpart H that only applies to ‘new drugs for serious or life-threatening illnesses.’ If pregnancy isn’t an illness, their logic goes, then mifepristone shouldn’t have been approved at all.”7 The FDA never claimed that pregnancy was an illness. Rather, the FDA rightly acknowledges that “pregnancy is a medical condition [which can cause death] — for which the FDA lawfully regulates drugs and devices. (See also: FDA-approved pregnancy tests.)”8
The bill also falsely claims that “[t]here is a four times higher risk of experiencing complications due to a chemical abortion than a surgical abortion.” This is more nonsense.
The claim originates from anti-choice groups twisting data from a 2009 Finnish study in order to support the anti-choice position. For years now, anti-choice groups have been pushing this false claim. Politifact did a deep dive on this, which you can read here.

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