60 lawmakers support lawsuit to limit abortion pill after Trump requested pause
FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A coalition of 60 lawmakers filed an amicus brief supporting a lawsuit to limit the abortion pill after the Trump administration requested a pause to the case, The Daily Signal can first report.
On Friday, 58 Republican representatives and senators, led by Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, filed the amicus brief in support of Louisiana’s effort to restore the in-person dispensing requirement on the abortion pill.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill filed a lawsuit in 2025 challenging a Biden-era rule allowing abortion drugs to be dispensed to women through the mail without seeing a doctor first. A hearing for State of Louisiana v. Food and Drug Administration is scheduled for Feb. 24.
Ahead of the hearing, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice asked a federal court to pause Louisiana’s case against the Food and Drug Administration while the agency conducts a safety review into the abortion drug mifepristone.
“I thank Attorney General Murrill for defending women and babies in Louisiana and across the country. Chemical abortion drugs kill innocent children and put mothers’ lives at risk,” said Cassidy, who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. “Safeguards protecting against coercion, such as the in-person dispensing requirement, must be reinstated immediately.”
Louisiana filed the lawsuit alongside resident Rosalie Markezich, who says her boyfriend coerced her into taking abortion pills, which he ordered from a doctor in California. While Louisiana law prohibits abortions in almost all cases, the lack of an in-person dispensing requirement on the drugs allowed him to obtain the drugs out of state through the mail.
The GOP lawmakers argue that Biden violated federal law by removing the in-person dispensing requirement, and that these protections should be reinstated.
When Congress passed the Comstock Act, it declared that abortion drugs are “nonmailable matter” by the United States Postal Service and private carriers, but the Biden administration illegally allowed abortion pills to be shipped across the country, the brief states.
“This action contravenes federal laws passed by the elected representatives of the American people,” according to the brief. “It also contravenes state laws prohibiting abortion, such as Louisiana’s, even though ‘the authority to regulate abortion’ belongs to ‘the people and their elected representatives,’ not unelected bureaucrats.”
The Biden FDA also did not properly consider the safety risk of the abortion pill when removing the in-person dispensing requirement, according to the lawmakers.
A study from the Ethics and Public Policy Center found that 11% of women experience adverse health effects, such as sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion.
“The Biden FDA did not have a sufficient evidentiary basis to conclude that eliminating the in-person dispensing requirement was safe,” the brief says. “And because no in-person visit is required now, women cannot be meaningfully screened for serious contraindications for the use of this drug, such as ectopic pregnancy.”
“It also increases the likelihood that some women are being coerced into taking these drugs against their will, as the heartbreaking story of Plaintiff Rosalie Markezich illustrates,” the brief continues.
The amicus brief supports Murrill’s motion for preliminary relief and asks for a preliminary injunction ordering FDA to suspend or withdraw the 2023 Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy while the case proceeds.
Mifepristone has become the most common abortion method, accounting for about 63% of all abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm. However, this is likely an undercount, according to the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute, because this count does not include abortions outside the formal health care system or under shield laws.
Shield laws allow abortionists to mail abortion drugs to women, including those in states that prohibit most abortions or impose gestational limits.
Murrill previously told The Daily Signal she is hopeful the judge will reject the Trump administration’s request to pause her lawsuit seeking to reinstate regulations of the abortion pill.
“I am certainly hopeful that he will not accept the Department of Justice’s position, because they haven’t given any concrete reason to believe they are actually moving forward,” she said.
At the time, a spokesperson for the Justice Department told The Daily Signal in a statement that the agency “remains committed to advancing President Trump’s pro-life agenda, including through dismissing criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits against peaceful pro-life advocates targeted by the previous administration, and using the FACE Act to protect pro-life pregnancy centers.”
“In this filing, the Department of Justice simply requested more time from the court for the FDA to complete its review of mifepristone REMS,” the spokesperson added. A Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, or REMS, is a protocol for the FDA to ensure safe usage of higher-risk drugs.
“As the Supreme Court recognized in a unanimous ruling less than two years ago,” the spokesperson continued, “it is the role of the FDA—not the federal courts—to evaluate drug safety data and impose appropriate precautions.”
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]