Pro-Life Champions: Louisiana AG Lawsuit Could End 'Plan C' Abortion Crime Wave
The lawsuit demands a reversal of the Biden FDA's reckless deregulation of the abortion pill.
Louisiana's attorney general just threw a wrench in the dark money-backed plot to flood pro-life states with a dangerous abortion drug.
A federal lawsuit filed on Oct. 6 by Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill seeks to nullify the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) 2023 changes to its regulations for the abortion pill, mifepristone, which enabled the drug's dispensation via mail to virtually anyone, in any state—even Louisiana, where abortion is almost completely banned.
"Granting abortionists the ability to prescribe this drug anonymously removes the final safeguard in its distribution, provides an opportunity for forced abortion."-Dr. Christina Francis, AAPLOG
"Every year, doctors and activists in states like California and New York mail … mifepristone to thousands of Louisiana residents for the express purpose of causing abortions in Louisiana that are blatantly unlawful," Murrill noted in her complaint.
"This extra-territorial mailing of abortion drugs is illegal under state law—and it is the direct result of the Biden Administration's 2023 agency action expressly facilitating this scheme," she added.
The litigation comes amid the FDA's ongoing review of mifepristone's safety, though the agency's recent approval of a second generic version of the drug has called that review into question. Now, President Donald Trump's pro-life base waits with bated breath to see how his administration responds to Murrill's lawsuit.
(RELATED: The Nation Must Face the Abortion Pill Legal Monster)
A Politically Driven Crime Wave
The Biden FDA stopped enforcing mifepristone's in-person dispensation requirement in December 2021 citing the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet in 2023, when the public health crisis had subsided, the agency made the change permanent, eliminating its last meaningful safeguard for the drug's use.
Murrill's lawsuit notes that decision was "avowedly political," citing then-President Joe Biden's order that his administration "identify all ways to ensure that mifepristone is as widely accessible as possible … including when prescribed through telehealth and sent by mail."
Biden issued that order in direct response to the Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision striking down the national right to abortion in 2022. Now the public is learning the full consequences of his directive.
Two independent reviews of medical insurance claims data published earlier this year by the Restoration of America Foundation and the Ethics and Public Policy Center found that mifepristone abortions have a serious complication rate of about 11 percent—22 times the risk the FDA has long claimed.
Murrill's lawsuit cites that research, noting that more than one-in-10 women "experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion."
Women have been misled about the dangers of the chemical abortion pill.
— Restoration of America (@Restoration_roa) August 14, 2025
Research by @_FFROA found that the rate of serious adverse events from the pill is about 22 times higher than the rate stated by the FDA.@DougTruax discussed with @Michele_Tafoya on @WatchSalemNews: pic.twitter.com/9fEmdz4pDu
Aside from the health risks, however, the complaint also details the heightened safety risk women now face from potential abusers, citing the case of plaintiff Rosalie Markezich, a Louisiana victim of coerced abortion.
According to the complaint, Markezich did not want an abortion, but in October 2023, "under immense pressure and fearing for her safety," she took the abortion drugs her boyfriend ordered via mail from a California abortionist.
Dr. Christina Francis, AAPLOG
"But for FDA's 2023 REMS [Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies], Rosalie would have received the protection of a private in-person medical appointment," the complaint notes. "And if she had been able to tell a doctor that she did not want an abortion, the drugs that took her baby's life would never have been provided."
Louisiana has issued an arrest warrant for the California doctor who allegedly prescribed the drugs, Dr. Remy Coeytaux, who also received a cease-and-desist letter from Texas officials for facilitating two unlawful abortions in that state.
Similar cases of illegal and coerced abortions have cropped up around the country in the wake of mifepristone's deregulation. Even in pro-life states, accessing the pills is easy with the help of such dark-money initiatives as Plan C, which aims to connect abortion pill seekers with providers willing to ship the drugs to any person in any state.
This black market for abortion drugs exists and continues to grow thanks to the Biden FDA's actions—and the Trump FDA's inaction.
A National Problem
As Murrill's lawsuit points out, the Trump administration already has the legal grounds to restore commonsense restrictions on mifepristone.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals found in a similar case in 2023 that the Biden FDA's actions violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to assess the ramifications of stripping the drug's safeguards before doing so. Circuit Judge James Ho further held that the dispensation of abortion drugs via mail runs afoul of the Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law that explicitly prohibits the mailing of abortion-related materials, including abortion drugs.
At any time, the Trump administration could reverse the Biden FDA's decisions, and it has good reason to do so. Requiring patients to see a doctor in person before taking the drug would not only stop would-be abusers in their tracks but also reduce the chances of a woman experiencing serious adverse side effects.
For instance, doctors can only rule out the dangerous condition of ectopic pregnancy—when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus—with an ultrasound. Mifepristone does not terminate ectopic pregnancies, though its side effects could lead a woman to believe she has successfully ended a pregnancy that in fact continues to threaten her life. Yet instead of moving to protect women from such situations, the Trump FDA recently approved a second generic version of the drug for the U.S. market.
That decision perplexed 51 GOP Senators and many of the president's pro-life supporters, including Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
(RELATED: EXCLUSIVE—51 GOP Senators Urge RFK Jr. to Take Action on Dangerous Abortion Pill)
EXCLUSIVE: 51 GOP Senators Urge RFK Jr. to Take Action on Dangerous Abortion Pill.
— Restoration News (@NewsRestoration) October 16, 2025
The urgent campaign to protect women's health is led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) citing a study by the Restoration of America Foundation.https://t.co/JwQ9l7ezTG
"Women and children are suffering from Biden's cruel mail-order abortion drug scheme. The last thing they need is an expansion of cheap, new abortion drugs flooding every state, undermining pro-life laws enacted since Dobbs," Dannenfelser said, advocating for the immediate reinstatement of the FDA's previous restrictions on mifepristone.
Kelsey Pritchard, SBA Pro-Life America
In the wake of Dobbs, Trump has repeatedly referred to abortion as a states' rights issue. But Kelsey Pritchard, SBA Pro-Life America's communications director, noted that the FDA has made it impossible for pro-life states to enforce their own abortion restrictions.
"No state, no matter how pro-life, has been able to stop the flood of unregulated abortion drugs," Pritchard told Restoration News. "Blue state shield laws protect abortionists and activists who break the laws of other states—putting women in the ER, fueling domestic violence, and ending the lives of millions."
California, for instance, now allows doctors to prescribe abortion drugs anonymously, helping them to evade justice for their abortion crimes in other states. Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life OB-GYNs, described that practice as "medical malpractice at its worst."
"Granting abortionists the ability to prescribe this drug anonymously removes the final safeguard in its distribution, provides an opportunity for forced abortion, as happened to the plaintiff in this [Louisiana] case, and allows Californians to flagrantly violate the laws of life affirming states," Francis told Restoration News. "By continued deregulation of mifepristone, the FDA is permitting unsafe practices and unsafe people free rein."
Abby Johnson, CEO and founder of And Then There Were None and ProLove Ministries, added that the status quo has made the pro-life movement's goal of protecting both women and babies that much more difficult to achieve.
Abby Johnson, ProLove Ministries
"This is the new sidewalk, and pro-lifers are losing," Johnson told Restoration News. "The FDA not only needs to remove abortion pills from the marketplace, but pro-lifers need to ceaselessly work to reach women online and through pregnancy resource centers to help them realize they have other options, that the abortion pill is not safe, and that abortion is the opposite of empowerment."
A favorable ruling on Murrill's lawsuit could change the landscape in favor of life, but that could require a long, drawn-out legal battle. All that infighting—and a potential midterm election crisis—could be avoided if the Trump FDA were to simply reverse the previous administration's harmful decisions.
Either way, Pritchard said federal action is needed. "We need national leadership to end the blue states' assault on state sovereignty and the laws and judicial proceedings in red states."
(READ MORE: How Trump 2.0 Can Get Back to Trump 1.0 on the Abortion Pill)
