A horrific story out of Ohio illustrates what we should all be able to agree is common sense – that prescription drugs meant to cause an abortion should not be freely available to anyone and everyone online. 

Last week, the State Medical Board of Ohio suspended a doctor’s license after an investigation revealed he administered abortion pills that he obtained online to his pregnant girlfriend after she declined to have an abortion. 

According to the investigation, Dr. Hassan Abbas had recently separated from his wife and began dating another woman. In December of 2024, the woman told Abbas that she was pregnant. When he asked her to get an abortion, she declined. Abbas then ordered abortion pills online from an “out-of-state telemedical abortion provider” using his wife’s identifying information. 

Ten days later, Abbas allegedly crushed the pills up and forced them into his girlfriend’s mouth while she was sleeping. After managing to get away from Abbas, she ran to another room to call 911, but Abbas took her phone and hung up. The woman was able to drive herself to the hospital where she reported the assault and vaginal bleeding. 

It is unclear whether the woman’s baby survived the abortion attempt. However, it is abundantly clear that as long as abortion pills are allowed to be sold under the guise of “telemedicine,” these types of tragic assaults will continue to happen. Just here in Louisiana, at least two situations in which a woman was forced to take abortion pills against her will have been made public. In one case, a mother forced her minor daughter to take abortion pills that the mother obtained online through a so-called telemedicine provider. In another, a young-woman was forced by her boyfriend to take abortion pills that he also obtained online through a different “telemedicine” provider. 

Let’s be perfectly clear – neither Abbas nor the perpetrators in Louisiana were able to obtain pills through “telemedicine”. Legitimate medical providers do not prescribe drugs to individuals without, at the very least, verifying their identity and further diagnosing the need for said drugs. 

It is more appropriate to call this what it is – a medical provider who negligently sold drugs to a person who was not his/her patient. We can call it drug dealing. We can call it medical malpractice. But we cannot in good faith call it “telemedicine”. At best, doing so harms the legitimate and sometimes much-needed practice of telemedicine. At worst, it is rubber-stamping a heinous criminal enterprise that intentionally causes unborn children to die, harms women, and degrades the honest practice of medicine.

This assault on unborn children, women, and the practice of medicine is made possible by the FDA’s failure to appropriately regulate abortion drugs, choosing instead to capitulate to the demands of “big abortion”. It is made possible by the federal government’s failure to enforce federal laws and prosecute abortion drug dealers. And it is made possible by well-funded lies used to coerce women into silence. 

We at Louisiana Right to Life have been sounding the alarm on these dangers for years. Every tragic story of abortion pill abuse reminds us that we cannot stop our efforts to educate the public, encourage lawmakers to take action, and to provide real, compassionate assistance to women and their unborn children.

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If you have been harmed by abortion pills in Louisiana, you have legal rights. Louisiana law empowers women to hold abortion drug dealers and distributors accountable. Coerced abortion is a crime in Louisiana. If you feel you have been pressured to have an abortion against your will, contact your local law enforcement agency and report your experience at abortionimpact.com