Trump Should Support State’s Lawsuit to Stop Illegal Abortion Pills

The White House is intervening in a lawsuit intended to block abortion drugs from being shipped into red states with pro-life laws in place, asking a federal court to pause the case. On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a motion in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, requesting that Louisiana’s lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) be stayed, citing the FDA’s ongoing study of the abortion drug mifepristone and arguing that Louisiana’s lawsuit may not succeed in barring blue state abortionists from shipping the abortion drug into pro-life states.

Louisiana originally filed its lawsuit in October, demanding that the FDA reinstate prior safety rules which mandate that the abortion drug be prescribed, dispensed, and consumed in-person in a physician’s office. The lawsuit was in response to a number of instances where abortionists in blue states like California and New York shipped abortion drugs across state lines to men and women in states like Louisiana and Texas, where pro-life laws bar abortions, including the use of the abortion drug. However, California and New York have enacted “shield laws,” blocking red states from prosecuting abortionists who violate state pro-life laws.

“The fight for life is far from over,” Louisiana charged in its lawsuit. The lawsuit noted that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which reversed Roe v. Wade, explicitly permitted elected legislators, including those at the state level, to enact laws regulating abortion, which is what Louisiana did in enacting a “trigger law” to ban abortion once Roe was overturned. “Or so Louisiana thought. Shortly after Dobbs, pro-abortion activists and doctors launched a nationwide effort to effectuate abortions in pro-life states like Louisiana — all without.

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setting foot in those states,” the lawsuit averred. But the weakened safety standards around the prescription, dispensation, and consumption of the abortion drug have allowed abortionists to mail the drug to men and women they’ve never met, via online or “telehealth” platforms.

“This is an extraordinarily serious case, but it is also an extraordinarily easy case,” Louisiana argued. Through diluting the mifepristone safety standards in 2023, then-President Joe Biden and his administration “attempted to undermine Dobbs by facilitating the mailing of mifepristone into every pro-life state, thus harming Louisiana and causing women … immense suffering.”

In its Tuesday filing, the DOJ argued that Louisiana’s lawsuit threatens to “short circuit” the FDA’s review of mifepristone and the related safety guidelines. Louisiana’s lawsuit “would have this Court set aside the 2023 [safety protocol changes] — all without the benefit of FDA’s expertise, and even as the agency is already reconsidering the matter in its review,” the DOJ argued. “And Plaintiffs’ requested relief may prove as unnecessary as it is disruptive, if FDA ultimately decides that the in-person dispensing requirement must be restored.”

“To prevent that disruption, the Court should exercise its inherent authority to stay this litigation pending the outcome of FDA’s review of the mifepristone” safety guidelines, the DOJ continued. “FDA’s review will necessarily result in a new agency decision that could supersede the 2023 [safety guidelines modification], obviating any need to consider the merits of Plaintiffs’ arguments challenging the validity of the” modification. Should the FDA’s final decision on mifepristone “adversely affect” others, the DOJ invited those parties to file new lawsuits “at that time.”

The DOJ further claimed that the FDA’s current guidelines surrounding mifepristone, which do not require in-person prescription, dispensation, or consumption, in no way impact Louisiana’s ability to “make and enforce its pro-life policies after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org. … Nor are Defendants [the FDA] standing in the way of Louisiana enforcing its abortion laws against out-of-state prescribers of mifepristone.” The DOJ argued that how abortionists choose to prescribe and ship abortion drugs does not give rise to a “case or controversy” between Louisiana and the FDA.

“I think it’s a ridiculous assertion,” said American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) CEO Christina Francis on Wednesday night’s episode of “Washington Watch.” “This Louisiana case is asking for something that is very common sense. They’re just asking that that in-person dispensing requirement be put back into place before a woman can obtain the abortion drug.”

Francis further noted that one of the plaintiffs in the case, joining Louisiana, is a woman whose then-boyfriend illegally ordered the abortion drug and coerced her into consuming it, killing her unborn child. “That in-person dispensing requirement was in place for over two decades after the drug was approved; it was what was in place under the first Trump administration,” she stressed. “There’s no reason that the FDA couldn’t immediately reinstate that requirement, that in-person dispensing requirement, while at the same time doing a thorough safety review to see if more safeguards need to be put back into place.”

“If the FDA had, in fact, started their safety review when we were promised that they were, then that should be completed by now, or at least close to completion,” Francis suggested. “My understanding from the legal brief that was filed is now they’re saying it could be another year, and during that year, we know that hundreds of thousands of preborn children will lose their lives due to this drug, and tens of thousands of women will be harmed.”

“There’s certainly not a reason, from a medical standpoint, to keep from reinstating that in-person dispensing requirement. This is frank medical malpractice,” Francis charged. “Not only are women not receiving appropriate evaluation before they get this high-risk drug, but doctors in other states … are shipping these high-risk drugs into states where abortion is illegal, and they’re then being shielded from the consequences of their actions,” she continued. “This is frank medical malpractice, and it should not be put on hold because of any sort of political calculations. Women’s health, women’s safety should be paramount, lives of preborn children should be paramount.”

Last year, the DOJ similarly asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the FDA by Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas. That case also challenged the weakening of safeguards around mifepristone, but the DOJ argued that the states had brought their challenge in the improper venue and lacked standing.

Louisiana and other states with pro-life laws in place have filed lawsuits, issued arrest warrants, and requested extraditions in an effort to bring blue state abortionists to justice for violating state pro-life laws, killing children, and harming women, but “shield laws” in states like California and New York block the pro-life states’ efforts. In a recent bid to circumvent “shield laws,” Florida legislators introduced a bill empowering women and their families to sue out-of-state abortionists directly, rather than pitting two states against each other in court.

In July, the FDA launched a review of the safety standards surrounding mifepristone, following numerous studies and reports demonstrating the damage that the drug does to pregnant women — in addition to the unborn children killed by the drug. However, the agency quickly outraged pro-life Americans when it moved to expand mifepristone, approving a generic version of the abortion drug in September 2025.

LifeNews Note: S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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