The Mountain State is the latest Republican-led state to move to ban the abortion drug from being shipped through the mail. West Virginia’s state senate voted last week to approve Senate Bill 173, which takes aim at out-of-state abortionists mailing the abortion drug mifepristone across state lines and violating West Virginia’s pro-life laws. The bill states, “The State of West Virginia has a compelling interest in protecting the health, safety, and welfare of its citizens and in ensuring that drugs distributed within this state are lawfully prescribed, dispensed, and regulated in accordance with the laws of this state.”

The bill explicitly targets out-of-state abortionists, making it a felony punishable by three to 10 years in prison for non-medical professionals to send mifepristone or any abortifacient drug across state lines into West Virginia and would strip any medical professional who prescribes or mails abortion drugs into West Virginia of his medical license. The bill further empowers pregnant women or the family members of pregnant women who are mailed the abortion drug to file a civil lawsuit in West Virginia’s courts against the abortionist who prescribed or mailed the abortifacient. The civil action is to be pursued by West Virginia’s attorney general, who “may recover against the person or entity the maximum amount of pecuniary relief permitted under West Virginia law and may also recover against the person or entity attorney’s fees, costs, and expenses incurred in pursuing this claim.”

The West Virginia Senate passed the legislation Friday in a vote of 31 to one, with Democrat Joey Garcia being the only vote against. In a speech on the Senate floor, Republican Senator Chris Rose, the bill’s lead sponsor, said, “We are a pro-life state, but those laws are being violated by these bad actors that … are putting these pills in your children and your daughters’ and your wife’s mailboxes and the women and children estates’ mailboxes, without even seeing a physician, a pharmacist, or any other medical provider.” He touted the bill as a means to “add teeth to our laws to let them know that we will not tolerate out-of-state bad actors to disregard the sanctity of life that this body has preserved.” Rose asserted, “We will fight from womb to the tomb to preserve every human being, and we will defend the constitutional rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, even for the unborn.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Rose described the legislation as “a critical step forward in safeguarding West Virginia women and children from the dangers of unregulated chemical abortions,” which he called a “growing threat to our state’s near-total abortion ban.” Rose explained, “Out-of-state abortionists and entities have increasingly sought to undermine West Virginia’s pro-life protections by exploiting mail and courier services to send abortion drugs like mifepristone directly to residents.” Out-of-state abortionists bypass local oversight and medical safeguards, Rose said, which not only puts women at risk due to the abortion drug’s severe adverse side effects, but also violates the state’s Unborn Child Protection Act and treats “abortion as a mail-order commodity rather than a serious medical procedure.”

The legislation also equips West Virginia with the legal tools necessary to confront blue state “shield laws,” Rose told TWS. “While shield laws in states like California or New York aim to protect providers from cooperating with out-of-state prosecutions, our bill explicitly criminalizes the act of prescribing or sending abortifacients to West Virginians, regardless of the sender’s location,” Rose explained. “This creates a clear deterrent and empowers our state to seek enforcement through federal channels or interstate compacts where possible, while also prohibiting state contracts with manufacturers or distributors of these drugs,” he continued. “Ultimately, it reinforces West Virginia’s sovereignty in protecting life and challenges the notion that out-of-state actors can operate with impunity.”

Currently, abortion is almost entirely illegal in West Virginia, except in cases of rape and incest or fetal abnormalities, or in cases where the life of a pregnant mother is threatened. A 2018 constitutional amendment protecting unborn children was bolstered by a 2022 pro-life law protecting the unborn at nearly every stage in the state, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade. Like other red states with pro-life laws, however, West Virginia has had to deal with abortionists based in blue states mailing abortion drugs across state lines. Often, blue state “shield laws” protect out-of-state abortionists from being prosecuted for violating other states’ pro-life laws, prompting red states to empower citizens to circumvent “shield laws” by directly suing out-of-state abortionists.

Last week, Iowa’s state legislature advanced a bill requiring that abortifacient drugs, such as mifepristone, be prescribed and dispensed in-person, rather than mailed, while Florida has introduced legislation similar to West Virginia’s and Texas has already passed a law empowering citizens to sue out-of-state abortionists in Texas courts. Louisiana, meanwhile, has filed suit against blue state Governors Gavin Newsom (D) and Kathy Hochul (D) in an effort to force the extradition of California- and New York-based abortionists for violating the Bayou State’s pro-life laws by mailing mifepristone across state lines.

On Monday night’s episode of “Washington Watch,” Family Research Council Vice President for Policy and Government Affairs Travis Weber commented, “Clearly, the response here is states, the people in the states and — through their elected leaders — are responding to the fact that we have states being undermined by the abortion drug mifepristone.” He noted that blue states allowing the mailing of mifepristone into states with pro-life laws in place actually undermines the will of the people in those states, wantonly violating the laws that they elected legislators to put in place. “That’s problematic,” Weber affirmed. “Clearly … there’s a burgeoning movement here that is being driven by people who are upset, I think, at … their voice being undermined by dynamics which really are in the purview of the federal government to regulate, to step in.”

Under then-President Joe Biden, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revised safety guidelines surrounding the prescription and dispensing of mifepristone, diluting previous safeguards by no longer requiring that the abortion drug be prescribed, dispensed, and consumed in-person. Since then, blue state abortionists have taken to mailing mifepristone across state lines and into states with pro-life laws on the books. Alabama became the latest of 22 states last week to join a federal lawsuit against the FDA demanding that the abortion drug be prescribed and dispensed in person.