Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and a Pelican State woman who survived abortion pill poisoning sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week in an attempt to end the Biden administration’s mail-order permissions for mifepristone.
Louisiana is one of the most pro-life states in the country, with a prohibition on abortion — both surgical and chemical. In 2024, the state even reclassified the drug regimen responsible for most of the nation’s abortions as controlled dangerous substances and passed a law aimed at protecting women from abortion pill poisoning.
The new punishments for anyone in the Pelican State who knowingly coerces a chemical abortion in a woman without her consent were enacted in honor of Catherine Herring and her then-unborn daughter, Josephine. Their lives were threatened when Catherine’s ex-husband and Josephine’s father drugged them with mifepristone from Mexico. The mother-daughter duo survived the attempted poisoning thanks to abortion pill reversal treatment.
Louisiana’s abortion ban, however, allegedly didn’t stop Louisiana resident Rosalie Markezich from becoming “a victim of FDA’s mail-order abortion scheme” in October 2023 after her boyfriend reportedly coerced her into taking mifepristone he ordered from an out-of-state doctor.
Markezich reportedly wanted to continue her pregnancy and initially “refused the drugs,” but later ingested the drug, which essentially starves preborn infants to death by severing the hormones they require to grow and flourish, “under immense pressure and fearing for her safety.”
“Although she intended to throw them up as soon as she could get away from him, she was unsuccessful, and she lost her baby,” the lawsuit continued, noting that Markezich “faces prolonged emotional trauma and mourns the loss of her child” as a result.
Markezich also reportedly “endured physical pain and heavy bleeding from ingesting unwanted abortion drugs” and “continues to suffer mental-health effects from the trauma she experienced for which she seeks counseling and receives medication.”
The filing is careful to note that Markezich is not only the Louisiana woman who has suffered from mail-order mifepristone. State doctors, hospitals, and pregnancy centers have all allegedly reported encountering women experiencing side effects from the abortion drug regimen that the state estimates is responsible for “thousands of abortions” within its borders each year.
Much like Markezich’s alleged experience, 70 percent of abortions are believed to be unwanted, coerced, or inconsistent with the mother’s values and desires. Even those chemical abortions that are induced willingly, however, have the potential to harm women.
One recent analysis found that the rate of serious complications such as hemorrhage and infection after mifepristone abortion is at least 22 times higher than what the FDA and mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories suggest. Another study debunked the abortion lobby’s attempts to paint abortion pills as less harmful than over-the-counter painkillers such as Tylenol.
The California doctor who reportedly prescribed the drugs used to end Markezich’s unborn baby’s life faces an arrest warrant from the state for his alleged role in the reported poisoning.
“That conduct directly violates Louisiana’s abortion laws and prevents Louisiana from protecting the lives of unborn babies despite the promise of Dobbs. That conduct also has directly generated medical emergencies that harm Louisiana women and emergency room visits that harm the State,” the lawsuit states.
The illicit activity, the lawsuit claims, is led by multiple pro-abortionists across the nation.
“Every year, doctors and activists in states like California and New York mail a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved abortion drug called mifepristone to thousands of Louisiana residents for the express purpose of causing abortions in Louisiana that are blatantly unlawful,” the lawsuit states.
The push to mail mifepristone to pro-life states where it was banned intensified after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson ruling. The lawsuit claims this activism was only made possible by the Biden administration, which radically relaxed the Obama administration’s already questionable abortion pill policies to allow mail-order abortion pills.
Mifepristone by mail is directly linked to countless losses of unborn life and a steady stream of stories about women like Markezich, who were injured and even died after taking the drug.
The U.S. Supreme Court previously refused to rule on the merits of the Biden-era expansion after determining the pro-life plaintiffs lacked adequate legal standing. The majority opinion, penned by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, however, left the door open for the court to evaluate a stronger challenge.
“This is an extraordinarily serious case, but it is also an extraordinarily easy case,” Louisiana’s lawsuit concluded, noting that the 5th Circuit “has twice recognized the likely illegality of the reasoning” behind Biden’s mifepristone expansions.
SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser agreed in a statement that “there are crucial steps the FDA must take to immediately to protect Americans and restore confidence.”
“Ultimately, life-ending drugs do not make America healthy or great and there should be none on the market. At a minimum, we urge the FDA to act now to stop the flood of mail-order drugs and not delay another day,” she wrote.
Just last week, 25 years after the FDA bypassed safety concerns to approve mifepristone, the agency greenlit a generic version of the abortion pill manufactured by a company committed to “normalizing” abortion for all. On Thursday, 51 U.S. Senators asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the FDA to “bring an end to previous Democrat administrations’ abortion drug regulations while a comprehensive review is conducted.”
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
