(LifeSiteNews) — Louisiana asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to uphold a lower court ruling that blocked the distribution of the abortion pill mifepristone by mail nationwide.
The Louisiana attorney general’s office said in a filing that a 2023 Biden-era rule allowing mail delivery of mifepristone has led to thousands of illegal abortions in the state, despite its pro-life laws.
The abortions are also “directly causing tens of thousands of dollars of harm to Louisiana in the form of investigatory costs and Medicaid costs from statistically certain emergency room visits,” according to the state.
Louisiana thus “had no choice but to file this suit,” the attorney general’s office said.
The state urged the justices to preserve a decision by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last Friday that halted the Biden rule nationwide and reinstated the previous in-person dispensing requirement. Louisiana also called on the high court to reject emergency appeals by two pharmaceutical companies that make mifepristone.
The Supreme Court temporarily paused the Fifth Circuit’s ruling for one week on Monday.
The Biden Food and Drug Administration’s abortion pill policy, issued after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, has massively expanded the use of the mifepristone, undermining pro-life laws and causing serious harm to women, according to data.
Abortionists and abortion drug networks have mailed tens of thousands of pills into pro-life states under the rule, often enabled by “shield laws” in Democrat states that protect illegal abortion pill distributors from out-of-state law enforcement.
Around two-thirds of abortions in the U.S. are currently estimated to be committed using pills. Nearly 250,000 so-called “telehealth abortions,” or abortions committed with pills prescribed remotely, occurred in 2024 – more than a quarter of all abortions that year – according to a report by the pro-abortion Society of Family Planning.
A three-judge panel of Fifth Circuit unanimously ruled on Friday that Louisiana is likely to succeed in its challenge, saying that the FDA policy “injures Louisiana by undermining its laws protecting unborn human life and also by causing it to spend Medicaid funds on emergency care for women harmed by mifepristone. Both injuries are irreparable.”
Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, pharmaceutical companies that make mifepristone, filed emergency appeals with the Supreme Court in response. They asked the court to take up the case and rule on the merits and to hear oral arguments before the court’s summer recess.
In 2024, the Supreme Court rejected a previous lawsuit against the FDA’s abortion pill regulations by a group of pro-life doctors, on the grounds that they didn’t have standing to sue.
However, Louisiana’s challenge uses a different legal approach focused on state sovereignty and Medicaid expenses.
Louisiana is one of more than a dozen states that have banned nearly all abortions since the overturn of Roe. The state also outlawed abortion pills as controlled substances in 2024.
