This medication saved a Mississippi lawmaker’s fertility. Her colleagues criminalized it

By Sophia Paffenroth | Originally published by Mississippi Today

Sen. Kamesha Mumford of Jackson struggled with fertility for a decade before giving birth to her daughter, Gia, now 8. 

In 2009 and 2010, Mumford endured two miscarriages. In both instances, doctors prescribed her a medication called misoprostol to help expel the fetal tissue. That method avoids scarring that sometimes accompanies the surgical removal of tissue and helps protect a person’s future fertility. Mumford believes it made her daughter’s 2017 birth possible. 

On April 8, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill that will criminalize misoprostol and other abortion-inducing drugs, starting July 1. Supporters of the legislation said it is an effort to keep Mississippians from circumventing the state abortion ban by ordering abortion-inducing pills from providers in other states. 

“I think it’s a win for law enforcement and for the pro-life community,” Sen. Joey Fillingane, a Republican from Sumrall, told Mississippi Today. Fillingane was one of six lawmakers who negotiated the final version of the bill. 

But Mumford said the new law may prevent women like her from starting families. 

“Those are drugs that I’ve taken – not to have an abortion, but to have a baby,” said Mumford, a Democrat who won a special election last year to fill a vacant Senate seat. 

The new law will subject anyone who distributes or intends to distribute abortion-inducing drugs to up to 10 years in prison. Mifepristone and misoprostol are the two most common forms of the drugs. Health care providers prescribe these medications to treat several conditions unrelated to abortion, such as miscarriages, labor induction and postpartum hemorrhaging, which can be life-threatening. 

Lawmakers created an exception for providers who offer abortion-inducing drugs for non-abortion purposes. But experts say that’s not enough to prevent a chilling effect caused by doctors feeling threatened by the possibility of misunderstanding and criminal charges. 

Dr. John Preston Parry, a fertility doctor who headed the Mississippi chapter of American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists from 2023 to 2025, said there was no need for this legislation since elective abortion is banned in Mississippi. He said the new law will only serve to hurt women. 

“In a state where elective termination is already illegal, please let OB-GYNs and physicians do their jobs in protecting women with medically appropriate medications,” Parry told Mississippi Today. 

Mississippi’s new reality has already played out in Louisiana. Lawmakers in that state passed similar legislation in 2024. Despite Louisiana’s legislation having similar exceptions, several pharmacies in the New Orleans area stopped carrying misoprostol after the law went into effect. 

Those changes have resounding consequences, Parry said, since misoprostol doesn’t just preserve fertility. In many cases, it saves lives. 

“The number one reason women die in pregnancy is bleeding after delivery,” Parry said. “This is the cheapest medication that is out there for managing postpartum hemorrhage in the world.”

‘… relief in a moment that was devastating’

In 2015, five years after her two miscarriages and two years before her daughter was born, Mumford had a stillbirth. Doctors prescribed her misoprostol to facilitate the delivery of the baby, who Mumford already knew was deceased. She said the birth would have been far more traumatic had it taken longer. 

“(It) was just a way to give me some relief in a moment that was devastating,” Mumford said. 

Now, Mississippi women may not get the same medical relief Mumford did. 

Julie Kay, a New York-based human rights attorney and founder of Reproductive Futures, a group focused on increasing access to telemedicine abortion, was struck by specific language in Mississippi’s legislation that she thinks represents a disregard for women’s suffering. 

The bill excludes chemotherapy drugs from prosecution. Kay said she saw the same thing surface in Ireland, where she was part of a legal team that successfully challenged the country’s abortion ban in 2010. Abortion rights opponents in Ireland used the “double-effect” principle from theology to distinguish which medications pregnant people could use to terminate a pregnancy, Kay said. 

For example, if a pregnant woman with cancer is undergoing chemotherapy treatment that will eventually kill the fetus, the chemotherapy is permissible, Kay said. But drugs such as misoprostol that could terminate the unviable pregnancy sooner, are not. 

Often, it means women suffer needlessly, Kay said. 

“She would be forced to go ahead with the chemotherapy, lose the pregnancy, and that would be considered part of the ‘double-effect,’ so it wasn’t an abortion,” Kay explained. “And that’s just torturous.”

Mumford, an attorney, said she intends to try to change the new law in coming years. By sharing her story, she said she hopes her colleagues will see the unintended consequences of the law and will trade politics for a “genuine care of women.”

“How many of my colleagues would make a different decision if their daughter or wife was in this same position?” she said.

This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article