(LifeSiteNews) — California legislators recently passed legislation to protect rogue abortionists who illegally send abortion drugs into states with protections for preborn babies. Governor Gavin Newsom has until mid-October to sign the legislation.

Assembly Bill 260, passed on a party line vote last week, “would authorize a pharmacist to dispense mifepristone or other drug used for [chemical] abortion without the name of the patient, the name of the prescriber, or the name and address of the pharmacy, subject to specified requirements,” according to a legislative summary.

While the pharmacy would maintain some information, the law “would prohibit the disclosure of the information to an individual or entity from another state.” Law enforcement could see the logs only with a subpoena.

The law has come under criticism from pro-life experts.

“California’s AB 260 seeks to shield abortion providers from accountability, even when their actions harm women and destroy innocent lives across state lines,” the California Family Council wrote in its analysis. “This dangerous law puts profit and ideology above the safety of children and families.”

The counsel for the National Right to Life Committee said the bill means there will be “no accountability.”

James Bopp told the New York Times the bill would mean “even if you find the doctor, they could say, ‘Well I didn’t prescribe those pills.’ How are you going to prove that the pills she took in this box with no names on it were the ones that he prescribed?”

Abortion pills have flooded the country

These so-called “shield laws” are intended to prevent abortionists from being prosecuted by other states when they ship illegal abortion pills into the states. Currently, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is engaged in a legal battle with New York officials who are shielding abortionists from prosecution for sending the drugs into the Lone Star State.

New York also has a “shield law” in place. In the years since the reversal of Roe v. Wade, other pro-abortion states have moved to protect abortionists from any consequences for illegal abortions.

Abortion drugs have become more frequently used since President Joe Biden eliminated basically every federal regulation on them, allowing the pills to be shipped across the country without any accountability. Currently, they account for about 63 percent of all abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The “shield laws” have drawn legal scrutiny from the attorneys general of Republican states, meanwhile.

“By encouraging medical professionals in pro-abortion states to violate pro-life States’ abortion laws, shield laws are antithetical to the spirit of federalism and the Dobbs decision by not allowing each State to regulate abortion as it sees fit,” attorneys general from 16 different states wrote to Congress, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews.

“Shield laws also raise serious constitutional concerns. For example, they violate the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution because they do not give ‘full faith and credit’ to the judicial proceedings occurring in other States. U.S. Const. art. IV, § 1,” the letter added. “When New York or California refuses to respect a criminal prosecution or a civil judgment against an individual who is accused of violating the abortion laws of another State, they are refusing to give full faith and credit to that State’s judicial proceedings. Similarly, shield laws could run afoul of the Extradition Clause of the Constitution.”

Abortion drugs can never be truly safe because they kill innocent preborn babies. Additionally, they can be dangerous for the women taking them, with at least one in 10 women suffering serious reported side effects, according to a comprehensive study.

“10.93 percent of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion,” the Ethics and Public Policy Center found in a report. “The real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone abortions is at least 22 times as high as the summary figure of ‘less than 0.5 percent’ in clinical trials reported on the drug label.”