Pro-life lawmakers, Louisiana AG squeeze Trump officials, accreditor for enabling forced abortions

Pro-life advocates, federal lawmakers and The Pelican State's top lawyer are tag-teaming the courts and Congress to limit both medication and surgical abortion, turning on the Trump administration for leaving in place Biden administration policy and a medical accreditor for requiring OB-GYNs in residency programs to be trained in abortion by default.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and a woman who alleges she was coerced into taking mail-order abortion pills sued agency leaders to revoke their predecessors' relaxed rules for mifepristone, which is taken with misoprostol to suffocate and starve a fetus to death and expel it from the uterus.

The defendants are Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary and FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Director George Tidmarsh, and their agencies.

Murrill raised her national profile by taking over now-Gov. Jeff Landry's lawsuit against the Biden administration for jawboning Big Tech to censor disfavored narratives, and she blasted the Supreme Court for finding the plaintiffs lacked legal standing. Congress is now considering legislation to penalize jawboning.

It's at least the second Murrill lawsuit to ensnare the Trump administration for President Biden's abortion policy, suing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission last year for a regulation drastically reinterpreting the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act to require "abortion leave." 

A federal judge quickly blocked the EEOC rule and vacated the "abortion accommodation mandate" this May for exceeding EEOC authority, though the case is still going. 

President Trump's Justice Department also continued its predecessor's legal arguments to dismiss a lawsuit by Idaho, Missouri and Kansas against the FDA's deregulation of mifepristone as a violation of their abortion laws, saying they have no connection to the court where the lawsuit started and exceeded the statutory window to sue.

'FDA already gutted' mifepristone safety tracking system, then declared it safe

The Biden administration responded to the Supreme Court ending federal abortion rights in Dobbs by removing "in-person dispensing requirement from its Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) for mifepristone," says the lawsuit by Murrill and Louisiana resident Rosalie Markezich, who blamed the change for "lasting emotional trauma."

"In October 2023, under immense pressure and fearing for her safety," Markezich took pills "her boyfriend obtained via the U.S. Postal Service from a doctor in California," leaving her "feeling trapped and terrified." By taking away her "protection of a private in-person medical appointment," the FDA enabled "the drugs that took her baby’s life," according to the suit Murrill filed in which Markezich is the co-plaintiff. 

Citing 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals findings and the defendants themselves, the AG and relationship abuse victim allege there's "no serious dispute" the removal of in-person dispensing is "arbitrary and capricious" under the Administrative Procedure Act.

It depends on the FDA's claim that "mifepristone is safe – a determination based on the absence of any adverse events reported in a system FDA already gutted," which the 5th Circuit called an "ostrich’s-head-in-the-sand approach," the suit says. The FDA even admitted the literature it cited "did not affirmatively support its position."

Though the Supreme Court dismissed the original mifepristone challenge by private doctors for lack of legal standing – despite oral argument suggesting wariness of insulating the FDA from judicial scrutiny – that's not a problem for Murrill and Markezich, the suit says.

It elaborates on the circumstances faced by Markezich, who previously endured "domestic abuse." Her boyfriend, with a criminal record, "became angry and shouted at her" when she refused to take the pills in a car, and her friends were "unaware of her whereabouts," so she swallowed the pills, unsuccessfully intending to vomit them when she could get away, according to the suit.

"Louisiana has incontrovertible evidence that" the dispensing change unleashed "streams of mifepristone by mail into Louisiana for the express purpose of causing thousands of abortions in Louisiana every year," as Trump's predecessor intended, violating its abortion laws and preventing it from protecting human lives "despite the promise of Dobbs."

The FDA change has also "directly generated medical emergencies," as shown by a pending indictment against New York's Margaret Carpenter for mailing mifepristone "that ultimately sent a teenage girl to a Louisiana emergency room," the suit says. 

The state is investigating a second case against Carpenter for allegedly sending pills to a woman 20 weeks pregnant, long after their effective window, "who wrapped her aborted baby’s remains in a towel and threw the baby in a garbage can."

New York responded by further insulating abortion pill providers from accountability, letting them "list the name of their clinic instead of their own name on prescription labels," and California's new law permits prescriptions "without identifying either the provider or the recipient," making it harder "if not impossible" for victims to hold providers and "abusers" accountable.

Murrill shared several more incidents like Markezich's, citing a single New Orleans OB-GYN who "has personally treated at least fourteen patients for abortion-drug complications – including roughly eleven for incomplete abortions and three for infection and sepsis—since Louisiana’s pro-life law went into effect in 2022," about half Medicaid recipients.

An opt-out in name only for abortion training?

All but two GOP senators led by South Carolina's Lindsey Graham urged Kennedy and Makary to reevaluate FDA approval of a new generic form of mifepristone despite HHS's earlier pledge to study abortion drugs' real-world harm, in a letter first shared with Just the News.

They cited recent pro-life research estimating 1 in 10 women who take mifepristone suffer severe adverse events led by emergency-room visits, hemorrhage and surgical abortion following drug failure, based on a massive "all-payer insurance claims database" tracking abortion outcomes from 2017-2023, "after the FDA stopped collecting complication information other than death in 2016."

"While we recognize the FDA’s statutory responsibility in evaluating drug applications, the timing of this approval appears inconsistent with the comprehensive safety reassessment your agencies have prioritized," senators wrote, asking leaders to end "Democrat administrations’ abortion drug regulations while a comprehensive review is conducted."

"As a starting point," the feds should stop approving generic mifepristone pending the outcome of HHS's REMS safety review, include all generic forms in the review, reinstate the "in-person dispensing requirement," suspend distribution as an “imminent hazard," and withdraw FDA guidance permitting pharmacy distribution, the letter says.

HHS did not respond to queries by Just the News for its response to the Louisiana lawsuit and senators' letter.

Section 237 in House Republicans' funding bill for the departments of Labor, HHS and Education prohibits funding for entities that administer "postgraduate physician training" or other health training programs and force participants to opt out of abortion training.

It also cuts off funding for programs that subject participants to discrimination for not "voluntarily elect[ing] to opt in to undergo such training" or perform, assist or "provide counseling or referrals for" such abortions.

The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education required OB-GYN residency programs to provide abortion training with no exceptions until the 1996 Coats-Snowe Amendment, which targeted accrediting agencies that require programs to perform or refer for abortions, according to NOTUS.

The council created an opt-out rather than ending the requirement, despite the amendment's clause "regardless of whether such [accreditation] standard provides exceptions or exemptions." 

Vice President of Communications Susan Holub told Just the News "ACGME doesn’t comment on pending legislation but is aware of the bill and is monitoring its status." She didn't explain how its opt-out fits with the "regardless" language in the amendment.

The American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs started pressing the opt-out issue with Republicans "a few years ago," vice-chair Susan Bane told NOTUS, calling it "coercive," difficult to "actually opt out" and promoting the "normalization of abortion as health care."

GOP Doctors Caucus co-chair Greg Murphy, N.C., confirmed to NOTUS his members met with AAPLOG. The Appropriations subcommittee chair who led the bill, Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., said doctors in training complained to lawmakers "we don’t want to have to be involved in this.”