A Louisiana state senator from Shreveport cited a family experience - which attracted national attention - as the motivation behind a bill now under consideration in the regular legislative session underway in Baton Rouge. The measure tackles the issue of abortion by fraud.
Molly Ryan with Louisiana Public Radio reports that a Senate committee unanimously voted to advance Senate Bill 276, known as the Abortion by Fraud Criminalization Act. It would make it a crime to give a pregnant woman an abortion pill without her knowledge or consent. State Senator Thomas Pressly (R-Shreveport) brought the bill in response to an ordeal experienced by his sister, Shreveport native Catherine Pressly Herring. She was pregnant when her husband, 39-year-old Houston attorney Mason Herring, gave her an abortion-inducing drug without her knowledge multiple times in 2022. In a plea deal with the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in February, the charge of felony assault to induce abortion was downgraded to injury to a child and assault of a pregnant person, with a jail sentence of six months.
Catherine Herring told the court that the sentence was not enough and their now 1-year-old daughter suffers from developmental delays and attends therapy eight times a week. According to the Associated Press, Herring said, “I do not believe that 180 days is justice for attempting to kill your child seven separate times.” She has publicly described the sentence as a failure of the Texas justice system.
The punishment spelled out in SB276 calls for a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a $75,000 fine. The bill also creates an enhanced penalty of a maximum 20-year prison sentence and $100,000 fine if the unborn child is more than three months of gestational age. That’s because, as the bill states, it “substantially increases the pregnant woman’s risk of death or serious bodily harm due to the nonconsensual use of an abortion-inducing drug on the pregnant woman.”
Catherine Herring testified, alongside her brother Sen. Pressly, before the Senate Judiciary C Committee hearing regarding SB276 on Tuesday, April 9 in Baton Rouge. The proposed legislation is scheduled to go before the full Louisiana Senate for debate on Monday, April 15.
