A federal district court just ruled that the state of Louisiana and a woman who said she was coerced into taking an abortion drug have standing to sue the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the Biden administration’s COVID-era mail-order abortion drug policy.
When plaintiff Rosalie Markezich found out she was pregnant, she told her boyfriend. He seemed happy about the pregnancy, she said. But he used her personal information to order mifepristone, an abortion drug that kills unborn babies by starving them of nutrients.
Markezich’s boyfriend, who had a criminal history, threatened her and coerced her into taking the deadly drug. Her baby died.
Markezich and Louisiana, which bars abortions with narrow exceptions, sued the FDA over the mail-order policy.
According to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America (SBA), the court said that Markezich and the state likely would succeed on the merits. An excerpt:
The court also determined Louisiana is suffering irreparable injury from the COVID-era policy of allowing deadly abortion drugs to be sent in the mail, violating their laws, and ordered the FDA to provide a status report and any updated time frame for its promised safety review of mifepristone in no more than six months from the ruling date.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration tried to dismiss lawsuits that Florida and Texas filed against the FDA to restrict access to mifepristone. The FDA approved a generic version of the drug, but has not thoroughly evaluated the drug since initial approval in 2000.
“This ruling comes after the DOJ has repeatedly tried to get states’ challenges to the policy dismissed, even while online abortion drug vendors flagrantly violate state laws and send women and girls to emergency rooms across the country,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, SBA president. “The Trump-Vance administration should stand with Louisiana and other states to enforce their laws and protect women and unborn children, rather than defending Biden’s disastrous COVID-era policies.”
The Center for Urban Renewal and Education and other pro-lifers wrote to President Donald Trump expressing their concern about the FDA expanding access to the abortion drug under outdated regulations.
