(LifeSiteNews) — Twenty-one states have joined Louisiana’s lawsuit against the federal government challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) relaxation of abortion pill rules, in defiance of the Trump administration’s call for the matter to be indefinitely postponed.
Last fall, Louisiana sued the FDA over its Biden-era removal of the requirement that abortion drugs be dispensed in-person that drastically expanded their usage, encroached on state law, and harmed women such as co-plaintiff Rosalie Markezich.
“Rosalie took abortion drugs that her boyfriend obtained via the U.S. Postal Service from a doctor in California. Rosalie did not want to have an abortion,” the lawsuit maintains. “But far from empowering Rosalie to make her own choice and preserving her autonomy, mail-order abortion drugs had Rosalie feeling trapped and terrified. She grieves the loss of her child and endures lasting emotional trauma.”
The change “directly violates Louisiana’s abortion laws and prevents Louisiana from protecting the lives of unborn babies despite the promise of Dobbs,” Louisiana says. “That conduct also has directly generated medical emergencies that harm Louisiana women and emergency room visits that harm the State.”
On February 13, the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming filed an amicus brief taking Louisiana’s side, asserting that the rules interfere with their lawful “prerogatives to protect prenatal life.”
“Like Louisiana, amici States believe that the Biden Administration’s attempt to establish a nationwide abortion standard is an attack on state sovereignty,” it says, noting the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Constitution does not allow the federal government to dictate “every nook and cranny of daily life.” The rule change, it declares, “allows California to set nationwide policy, regardless of what citizens in Louisiana and Nebraska may think. The Constitution promises more. Louisiana has suffered concrete harm and thus has standing to challenge the Biden Administration’s unlawful actions.”
“This is about protecting life, but it’s also about state sovereignty,” declared South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson in a press release. “What good does it do for one state to pass a law banning something, like chemical abortion drugs, if another state is still allowed to mail them into our state?”
Late last month, however, the Trump FDA filed a motion urging the court to at least temporarily deny relief to Louisiana and Markezich, arguing they lacked legal standing and claiming a judgment in the case would cause a “disruption” with the agency’s alleged ongoing review of the abortion pill, which it noted could render the lawsuit unnecessary if the agency ultimately decides to restore the in-person dispensing requirement on its own.
Many pro-lifers, however, are losing patience waiting for that review, which was promised last May but has received no conclusions or significant follow-up since. Last week, a group of senators held a private meeting with Makary on Tuesday, after which Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) went so far as to declare, “I just don’t think that that review is even underway.” The FDA claims it is merely taking the time to process and review all the data carefully.
Mail-order abortion pills have become arguably the abortion lobby’s most important tool for perpetuating abortion-on-demand and undermining pro-life laws, as it makes chemical abortions even in pro-life states extremely difficult to prevent.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s most recent annual report revealed that, almost two years (as of April 2024) after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed direct abortion bans to be enforced for the first time in half a century, the nation’s largest abortion chain still operated almost 600 facilities nationwide, through which it committed 392,715 in the most recent reporting period. According to the Lozier Institute’s Prof. Michael New, that is a “record number of abortions for the organization and represents approximately 40 percent of the abortions performed in the United States.”