Guess Which State Just Compared Abortion Pills to Fentanyl & Guns!?

Despite the administration reportedly pleading with them to play things cool until Republicans survive a perilous midterms, Louisiana on Tuesday took the FDA to federal court over the abortion pill, and asked judges to issue an injunction to effectively halt all telehealth abortions. Leading the lawsuit was the state’s anti-abortion Attorney General Liz Murrill (R) (who really needs to get a real job). Also present was Erin Hawley, an attorney at the far-right group Alliance Defending Freedom, and the wife of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)—better known as the country’s resident anti-abortion slenderman.

“I guarantee you that if I took a gun and I filed off the serial number of the gun and sent it to those states where that’s illegal, they would want to prosecute me for that,” Murrill told members of the press following arguments, with Hawley at her side. “Anybody can go online, they can obtain these pills, there is no human interaction at all. Some doctors somewhere is facilitating the distribution of these pills, it would be no different if they were sending fentanyl,” she continued.

Specifically, Murrill wants the FDA to rescind its 2023 decision removing the in-person requirement for mifepristone. She claims this has led to people using the abortion pill to poison women and coerce them into having abortions. 

Weekly reminder that the abortion pill mifepristone is safe—safer than Tylenol, and safer than Viagra, and has been backed by more than 100 studies. What’s more, a JAMA study published in January confirmed that the previous FDA studies that took place from 2011 to 2023 were based on both fact and real science, not politics. 

“This case has the potential to make dramatic, nationwide changes to mifepristone access and will worsen our country’s health care crisis,” Planned Parenthood Federation of America President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson told Jezebel in a statement. “Let’s call this case what it is: an attempt to ban abortion by any means.”

Speaking at the press conference, Hawley said the lack of in-person visits is “extraordinarily dangerous for women’s health,” adding that “women don’t get checked for an ectopic pregnancy.” (The reality is women with ectopic pregnancies, under restricted access to abortion, are blocked from life-saving, essential care.) “Those drugs would not have been able to be ordered without this unlawful regime,” she said. Speaking of unlawful regimes…

The Trump administration has been seemingly trying to slam the brakes on the FDA’s potential review of the abortion pill, which FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary timidly promised after Sen. Hawley basically harassed him into it using his bogus far-right study. (The study was published by a far-right think tank, was not peer reviewed, and has been denounced by over 200 experts.) With a slim 218-214 House and 53-45 Senate majority, the administration reportedly wants to delay the FDA’s review until after the midterms. In January, the Justice Department asked a federal court to stall the Louisiana case.

Murrill seemed pissed that Trump didn’t immediately reinstate the in-person requirement upon entering office, saying at the press conference that she “believed that the Trump administration would do that quickly, unfortunately, they have not done it quickly, and I think that should change.” 

Despite all the insanity, various organizations stressed to Jezebel ahead of Tuesday that so long as people still need abortions, they will keep providing them. “We have seen an endless parade of lawsuits from politicians that want to block access to the abortion care that people need, want, and deserve,” Dr. Angel Foster, co-founder of The Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project (The MAP), told Jezebel. “Anti-abortion politicians can file lawsuits all day long. But we’ll keep showing up for patients.”

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