Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill
BATON ROUGE — A Biden administration rule allowing the abortion drug mifepristone to be mailed to states such as Louisiana where abortion is prohibited would be overturned if a legal action filed by the state’s attorney general is successful.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill filed a motion to stay or postpone the 2023 Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS), which allows doctors to dispense mifepristone remotely, on Dec. 17. The litigation was filed on behalf of Rosalie Markezich, who was slipped the abortion drug by her boyfriend despite her desire not to have an abortion, according to the underlying lawsuit.
Murrill’s office said the purpose of the Biden administration rule, which removed an in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone, was a bid to allow doctors in blue states such as New York and California to prescribe and mail the drug to patients in states where abortion is illegal or restricted.
“We support the Trump administration which has acknowledged the flaws in the original rule,” Murrill said in a statement emailed to the Louisiana Record. “But unfettered and unsupervised access to these pills is dangerous. So the Biden-era rule should be enjoined."
The federal Food and Drug Administration, which oversees drugs such as mifepristone, said it does not comment on pending legal actions. “We also cannot comment on potential or future policy decisions,” such as a revision of the REMS rule, an FDA spokesman said.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the Western District of Louisiana, urges the district court to declare the rule unlawful and to enjoin its enforcement during the course of the litigation.
“Bad actors have been able to obtain FDA-approved abortion drugs from prescribers in other states and then secretly spike women’s drugs without their knowledge or force women into taking these drugs against their will,” the lawsuit states.
The motion for preliminary relief argues the 2023 REMS rule is arbitrary and capricious, a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and at odds with congressional prohibitions. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has come to similar conclusions, according to the motion.
The lawsuit cites a report from an abortion-rights group that from April until June of last year, abortion drugs mailed to Louisiana addresses from doctors and others in other states number an average of 617 per month.
“Louisiana has incontrovertible evidence that, because of the 2023 REMS, doctors and others are (as the Biden Administration intended) sending streams of mifepristone by mail into Louisiana for the express purpose of causing thousands of abortions in Louisiana every year,” the lawsuit states.
Murrill’s legal complaint indicates that a pending indictment in Louisiana charges a New York doctor with mailing mifepristone into the state. The drug ended up in the hands of a teenage girl who eventually had to go to an emergency room due to complications, according to the lawsuit.
The Biden administration changed the rules on mifepristone while ignoring safety risks associated with the drug, the lawsuit alleges.
“As FDA continues to acknowledge today, mifepristone poses serious risks to women – so much so that the FDA-required label says that roughly one in 25 women who use mifepristone as directed will end up in the emergency room,” the complaint says.
The district court scheduled a hearing on the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary injunctive relief on Feb. 24 in Lafayette.