‘Flat-out drug dealing’: Louisiana sues FDA over mail-order abortions

Louisiana has filed a lawsuit against two federal agencies over Biden-era policies permitting mail-order abortions across state lines.

The lawsuit, filed Oct. 6, alleges the federal government is imperiling the health of women and children and improperly overriding Louisiana’s anti-abortion law.

“This is flat-out drug dealing,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in an Oct. 8 phone interview on Tony Perkins’ Washington Watch show. “There is no care here. None whatsoever.” 

After Roe v. Wade was overturned, the Biden administration rolled back commonsense safety protocols under the guise of promoting abortion access, according to Murrill. 

“When the Biden administration withdrew the REMS [Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies) protocols, it allowed basically for anybody to send [abortion pills] anywhere,” she said. “It’s a huge problem. There was never any actual justification for removing those protocols, in fact quite the opposite. It’s very dangerous for women.” 

Abortion pills can adversely affect a woman’s health and often result in severe complications. 

One recent study found nearly 11% of women experienced a “serious adverse event” after using the pill. Such events included sepsis, fallopian tube rupture, hemorrhaging and infection. 

Although advocates of the drug argue it has a rate of less than 0.5% for serious adverse events, the risk of complications increases drastically as pregnancy progresses. 

“FDA’s label notes that the percentage of surgical interventions for ongoing pregnancies is ten times higher for women at 64-70 days’ gestation than for women at less than or equal to 49 days’ gestation,” reads the lawsuit (emphasis added). 

Women who take mifepristone after nine weeks are almost four times more likely to experience an incomplete abortion, twice as likely to suffer an infection, and more than six times as likely to have a surgical evacuation. 

But in mail-order abortions, no provider confirms the gestational age or offers follow-up care.  

Louisiana’s lawsuit names the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services as defendants. 

The plaintiff – alongside the state of Louisiana – is Rosalie Markezich, a woman who was forced to take an abortion pill her boyfriend had obtained through the mail, even though she wanted to keep her child. 

While Louisiana has a strong pro-life law, mail-order abortions have been enabled by “shield laws.” 

Shield laws are “legal protections for patients, health care providers, and people assisting in the provision of certain health care in states where that care is legal from the reach of states with civil, criminal, and professional consequences related to that care,” explains UCLA Law. 

Simply put, shield laws make it “legal” to provide an abortion to a woman in another state, even if her home state has made it illegal. 

The validity of such laws will be tested soon as Louisiana has issued an arrest warrant for the California doctor who provided abortion pills to Markezich’s boyfriend. 

Mail-order abortions also arguably violate the Comstock Act, which prohibits obscene, criminal or abortion-related materials being sent through the mail. 

The lawsuit has received praise from Christian leaders such as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. 

“Mifepristone has become a murder weapon. The drug is under review because it is unsafe for women – but it is also a tool used by killers – many times against a woman’s will or without her knowledge,” Perkins said in a press release. 

“I applaud my home state of Louisiana for filing this lawsuit to reinstate commonsense safety requirements that the Biden administration so callously and dangerously removed.”