(The Lion) — A legal battle is unfolding over a Biden-era policy change that allowed doctors to mail abortion drugs across state lines, as pro-life states argue the scheme effectively nullifies their protections.

Louisiana is suing the Food and Drug Administration with attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom for “enabling pro-abortion activists and doctors to mail streams of high-risk abortion drugs into states that protect the lives of unborn babies.” A woman who resides in the state, Rosalie Markezich, also joined the lawsuit, claiming she was coerced into taking abortion drugs that her boyfriend obtained by mail from a California doctor.

“No woman should be coerced into having an abortion,” ADF senior counsel Erik Baptist told The Lion in an interview. “What the FDA has created is a mail-order scheme that allows men to obtain abortion drugs and then coerce women into having an abortion of a baby that they actually want to keep. And so what our case really is challenging is what the Biden administration did in 2023 to authorize mail-order chemical abortion drugs throughout the United States, despite what states are trying to do to protect women and their unborn babies.”

The case, Louisiana v. FDA, is still in early stages – the complaint was filed last month, and more key motions will be filed before oral arguments begin. Baxter said he expects the fight to “heat up in the coming months” as both sides gear up for what could become a defining post-Roe showdown.

The lawsuit begins bluntly: “The fight for life is far from over,” it reads, as national debate has ensued following the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe. Louisiana, like other states, had pro-life “trigger” laws on the books that went into effect following the ruling, protecting unborn babies from abortion, with narrow exceptions.

“Shortly after Dobbs, pro-abortion activists and doctors launched a nationwide effort to effectuate abortions in pro-life states like Louisiana – all without setting foot in those states. How? By mail,” the lawsuit reads. “Every year, doctors and activists in states like California and New York mail a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved abortion drug called

mifepristone to thousands of Louisiana residents for the express purpose of causing abortions in

Louisiana that are blatantly unlawful.”

In December 2024 alone, the filing notes, there were more than 800 abortions in Louisiana resulting from drugs that were mailed across state lines. Although the FDA previously required the abortion drugs to be dispensed by doctors in-person, the Biden administration removed the requirement in 2023. The lawsuit argues it did so for “avowedly political reasons” as former President Joe Biden had directed his administration to “‘identify all ways’ to make abortion available in those states that, after Dobbs, opted to protect the life of the unborn.”

When reached by the Lion about its response to the lawsuit and whether the Trump administration was considering any rollback of the Biden-era rule change, an FDA spokeswoman said, “FDA does not comment on litigation.”

Baptist told the Lion that allowing doctors to prescribe abortion drugs across state lines “nullifies and eviscerates” both Louisiana’s and other states’ pro-life laws. Because the case is being brought “on behalf of a state and a woman injured by chemical abortion drugs, directly injured by what the Biden administration did,” Baxter said states have “unassailable standing to challenge what the FDA did here.”

Louisiana has a “sovereign interest in protecting the unborn and pregnant mothers,” he added. Baxter pointed to Markezich, a plaintiff in the case, as one such example, calling her a “wonderful woman who wanted to keep her baby” but felt “trapped” in a car with her boyfriend with “no other option” but to take the pills.

“Her hope was to throw them up the minute she got away from her boyfriend, but she was unable to, and she lost her child,” Baptist said. “And if there were no mail-order abortions, where a woman can only obtain these drugs in person, her boyfriend would never have been able to obtain them.”

Similar stories are emerging across the country, he added, as women are being “coerced or tricked or slipped these drugs against their will, against their knowledge, and by nefarious actors, including men who should never have been able to access the drugs.”

The lawsuit aims to overturn the Biden-era relaxation of abortion regulations and bring back in-person dispensing to “prevent the mailing of these drugs to anybody who asks for them.”