These Anti-Abortion AGs Can’t Leave the Abortion Pill Alone

In September, the FDA quietly approved a generic form of mifepristone, the first pill of a two-part abortion medication—a surprising move for a regime that lives and breathes on making women’s lives worse. Speaking about the decision at the time, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt promised that the move wasn’t an endorsement for abortion. They can say whatever they want, but the approval means expanded abortion access, since there are now three companies in the U.S. manufacturing mifepristone.

But of course, in America, you can’t expand reproductive health care without a bunch of Republicans tripping over themselves to roll it back. On Thursday, attorneys general from Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho filed an amended complaint, as part of an ongoing lawsuit they filed against the FDA in October, demanding the agency revoke the approval.

“Missouri will not stand by while manufacturers gamble with women’s lives,” Missouri’s newest anti-abortion gadfly, Catherine Hanaway, wrote in a statement accompanying the complaint. “Mail-order abortion drugs are dangerous when taken without in-person care.” Wrong.

Mifepristone is safe, and is the most commonly used abortion medication in the country. In 2023, it accounted for a quarter of abortions, largely thanks to shield laws, which allow providers from states without bans to prescribe the medication in states with bans. Also, a majority of Missourians voted in 2024 to protect the right to abortion—so it seems like the one gambling with women’s lives here is Hanaway.

“This effort from AG Hanaway is just another example of politicians who think they know better than doctors and all leading American medical associations,” Abortion Action Missouri’s executive director, Mallory Schwarz, told Jezebel in a statement. “Missourians deserve better than unqualified politicians playing doctor.”

Hanaway was joined by Kris Kobach, the Kansas AG who steered a letter signed by 21 other AGs that demanded the FDA investigate mifepristone; and Raúl Labrador, the Idaho AG who said the stories of women being airlifted out of Idaho for abortion care (because Idaho’s ban ensured they couldn’t get care in their own state) were fake.

The amended complaint is part of the AG’s ongoing lawsuit against the FDA, which they filed in October, in which they demand that the agency reinstate the pill’s pre-2016 safety standards, including banning mailing abortion pills and rolling back its approval from 10 weeks to seven. They also want patients to be required to make three in-person visits to the doctor before being prescribed a medication abortion.

In their complaint, the three wrote: “Mifepristone is a high-risk drug that the FDA continues to green-light despite its devastating effects on pregnant women and girls.” Again, untrue.

“The same three attorneys general from Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho have consistently tried to ban medication abortion across the country,” CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, Mini Timmaraju, said in a statement. “Catherine Hanaway and her anti-abortion colleagues have repeatedly tried to undermine more than two decades of science and data. They will not stop until mifepristone is banned everywhere.”

Informing both their lawsuit and the new complaint is the bogus right-wing study by a far-right think tank (and Project 2025 co-sponsor) that’s been amplified by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who was also once Missouri’s anti-abortion AG. The paper was denounced by over 200 medical experts, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans like Hanaway, Labrador, and Kobach from covering their eyes and sticking their fingers in their ears to continue the Republican tradition of making women’s lives worse.

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