50-20-702. Legislative findings and purpose. The purpose of this part is to further the important and compelling state interests of:
(1) protecting the health and welfare of a woman considering a chemical abortion;
(2) ensuring that a medical practitioner examines a woman prior to dispensing an abortion-inducing drug in order to confirm the gestational age of the unborn child, the intrauterine location of the unborn child, and that the unborn child is alive because the routine administration of an abortion-inducing drug following spontaneous miscarriage is unnecessary and exposes the woman to unnecessary risks associated with the abortion-inducing drug;
(3) ensuring that a medical practitioner does not prescribe or dispense an abortion-inducing drug after 70 days have elapsed since the first day of a woman's last menstrual period;
(4) reducing the risk that a woman may elect an abortion only to discover later, with devastating psychological consequences, that the woman's decision was not fully informed;
(5) ensuring that a woman considering a chemical abortion receives comprehensive information on abortion-inducing drugs, including the potential to reverse the effects of the drugs if the woman changes the woman's mind, and that a woman submitting to an abortion does so only after giving voluntary and fully informed consent to the procedure; and
(6) promoting the health and safety of women by adding to the sum of medical and public health knowledge through the compilation of relevant data on chemical abortions performed in the state as well as data on all medical complications and maternal deaths resulting from these abortions.
History: En. Sec. 2, Ch. 309, L. 2021.