JACKSON, Miss.—An effort to criminalize sending abortion drugs to patients in the mail by defining it as felony drug trafficking is advancing in the Mississippi Legislature. Under an amended version of House Bill 1613, doctors or providers who prescribe or distribute abortion-inducing drugs, like mifepristone and misoprostol, without an in-person visit with a patient could face imprisonment and civil penalties.
H.B. 1613’s original purpose was to clarify under the law that a person possessing 200 or more grams of illegal drugs would constitute an aggravated drug trafficking charge, Mississippi House Judiciary B Chairman Rep. Kevin Horan, R-Grenada, said on the House floor on Feb. 11.
Rep. Celeste Hurst, R-Sandhill, introduced an amendment to add “abortion-inducing drugs” to the list of illegal substances under the drug trafficking statutes in Mississippi Code Section 41-29-139.
The most common use of abortion-inducing drugs is for pregnant people who are going through a miscarriage. Doctors prescribe the drug and supervise the process. Hurst told the Mississippi Free Press that the intention of her amendment is to ensure patient safety by clarifying that it is illegal under state law for doctors to prescribe those medications without an in-person visit from a patient.
“Right now, it’s being mailed out without any doctor oversight and without any age verification whatsoever—they’re not even verifying if the person they’re communicating with via form is a woman,” she told the Mississippi Free Press on Feb. 16.
Hurst clarified that her amendment would not punish people who receive the abortion-inducing drugs illicitly from doctors; it would only affect the doctors or prescribers.
Violators could face imprisonment at the Mississippi Department of Corrections for one to 10 years under the legislation. The Mississippi attorney general could also enforce civil penalties for the offender “to obtain declaratory or injunctive relief, and to recover civil penalties and costs,” the amendment explains.
‘This Does Not Apply to Plan B’
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022 in the Mississippi case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, allowing states to ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy. Soon after, Mississippi enacted its near-total abortion ban, forcing the state’s only abortion clinic to shut down.
Since then, some Mississippi women have sought to get abortion medications mailed to them from providers in states where it remains legal.
Abortions in Mississippi are illegal at all stages, with an exception for cases of rape until fetal cardiac activity becomes detectable (around six weeks gestation) and a vague exception for cases in which a pregnant person’s life is at risk.
Seeking clarification, Rep. Christopher Bell, D-Jackson, asked Rep. Celeste Hurst on the House floor on Feb. 11 if she included Plan-B or similar drugs in her amendment. The amendment only mentions “abortion-inducing drugs,” but does not specify any specific abortion drugs by name.
“Are people getting high off of Plan B drugs?” Bell asked.
“I don’t know if ‘high’ is the answer, no,” Hurst responded.
“So, why would we want to put this in this bill?” Bell questioned.
“Because (abortion-inducing drugs are) damaging to women when not under the care of a physician, and that is how these drugs are coming in,” Hurst replied. “They’re coming in from out of state without a physician’s oversight. They’re being shipped in. You could go on, as a man, and get this drug by just filling out a form.”
Hurst later said that her amendment “does not apply to Plan B.” Bell asked her the names of the drugs she is trying to ban.
“There are a couple of drugs that were specifically created for other purposes. One of them is if I had, or a woman—not me, I’m not pregnant—but if a woman who was pregnant had a miscarriage, there is a drug that would cause that baby to pass and that’s what the creation of that drug is for,” Hurst told him. “Those drugs are now being shipped into our state without any doctor oversight and in the state of Mississippi, it is illegal to give those drugs to a patient without physician oversight. That is in our current law. So what we’re doing is, we’re just clarifying that.”
Bell told the Mississippi Free Press that he voted against the bill because he believed the amendment had ill intentions, and he was not certain about whether or not the Plan B morning-after pill would be included as an “abortion-inducing drug.”
“I believe there was something more nefarious versus some drug trafficking pills that I have never heard of, anybody else in this room has ever heard of,” he told the Mississippi Free Press on Feb. 13 while sitting at his desk in the House chamber. “I’ve never heard of them trafficking (abortion-inducing) pills to give to people. That’s just weird.”
Hurst did not name any “abortion-inducing drugs” that could be included under her amendment. Bell noted that she did not back up her amendment with any police reports or articles that claimed abortion drug trafficking was happening in Mississippi. He added that when he spoke to the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics in the summer and fall of 2025, the department never mentioned that it was seeing cases of abortion drug trafficking.
During the 2024 legislative session, Rep. Dan Eubanks tried to criminalize manufacturing abortion pills in the state or distributing them through mail order, including from out-of-state, under House Bill 735, which died in the House Public Health and Human Services Committee that March.
‘For the Intent of Performing an Abortion’
When Rep. Lawrence Blackmon, D-Madison, asked Rep. Celeste Hurst about definitions in the bill, she couldn’t define abortion-inducing drugs nor could she name any, nor confirm how many series of drugs a person would have to take to cause an abortion.
“Under this bill, if a person possesses a certain amount of these abortion inducing drugs, would they then be guilty of aggravated trafficking?” Blackmon asked Hurst.
Mississippi House Speaker Rep. Jason White, R-West, rapped a gavel on the speaker’s dais.
“Time expired on the lady’s amendment. I’ll let her answer that,” he said.
“I assume if it was for the intent of performing an abortion, the answer would be yes, but that would have to be proved in a court of law,” Hurst told Blackmon.
Hurst left the podium and Horan took her place. He said he supported the amendment and that he was ready for the chamber to vote on the bill.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” several people groaned. White scolded them and told them to “maintain order” in the chamber.
“Gentlemen, I see the buttons pushed. You will maintain order, or I will escort you out of the chamber,” White said, looking to his right and pointing and waving his right index finger. “Do you understand?”
“No,” a voice said.
“If you don’t, you can go,” White said, gripping the speaker’s podium. “Raise your voice again and you’ll be escorted out. I hadn’t passed over a single person who has sought recognition in this chamber in two and a half years.”
“Move final passage,” Horan said.
“Do you yield the podium, gentleman?” White asked
“Certainly,” Horan said.
“All right. There are multiple people requesting, I guess, interrogation. I don’t know the purpose of it. But you yield the podium and you move final passage,” White said.
“I move final passage. Yield,” Horan said as he walked away from the podium.
White ordered the House’s clerk to open the voting machine so that representatives could vote on the bill. The House approved H.B. 1613 by a 77-39 vote.
Reps. William Tracy Arnold, R-Booneville and Kevin Horan cosponsored the legislation. Reps. Dan Eubanks, R-Walls, and Rodney Hall, R-Southaven, cosponsored the amendment with Hurst.
The Mississippi Free Press reached out to the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood Southeast and the Center for Reproductive Rights, and several other reproductive rights organizations, but was not able to find any who were available to speak on the bill.
Follow the Mississippi Free Press’ coverage of abortion rights here.