Pro-life victory: Federal court temporarily blocks nationwide mail order sale of abortion pill

Pro-lifers won a smashing victory in court that had been denied to them by the Trump administration. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals banned the abortion pill, upholding a lawsuit filed by Louisiana against a Biden-era Food and Drug Administration order that authorized the pill in 2023. That order effectively ended legislative efforts by Republican-led states to restrict abortion access.

The initiative came as a Democratic response to the landmark Supreme Court ruling of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. A ruse that soon proved tremendously effective, allowing abortions to continue to surge to record numbers despite pro-life legislation in pro-life states, with heartbeat laws taking center stage.

Two out of every three abortions in the U.S. are performed using the abortion pill

Statistics indicate that more than two-thirds of abortions are now performed using the abortion pill, in many cases without medical supervision, posing risks to the mother's health.

Combined with the so-called shield laws of the Democratic states, which prevented their citizens who prescribed or shipped mifepristone to Republican-led states from having to answer to the latter's courts, the conservative restrictions were largely ineffective against interference from Democratic politicians.

For example, Louisiana, which brought the winning lawsuit, reported that about 1,000 abortions were being performed monthly in this way within its jurisdiction.

Unanimity in the ruling of the three judges of the court

The three judges on the court unanimously supported Louisiana's lawsuit, temporarily suspending distribution of the abortion pill nationwide while the case proceeds. Two of the judges were appointed by President Donald Trump, while the third was appointed by President George W. Bush.

The ruling indicates Louisiana has a good chance of succeeding in its appeal, noting that Biden's FDA policy "harms Louisiana by undermining its laws that protect unborn human life and also by forcing it to spend Medicaid funds on emergency care for women affected by mifepristone. Both harms are irreparable."

"Every abortion facilitated by FDA’s action cancels Louisiana’s ban on medical [i.e., chemical] abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person’. Once lost, that sovereign prerogative of protecting unborn life cannot be regained by legal remedy."

In addition, the New Orleans-based court stressed that the FDA's elimination of the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone "likely lacked a basis in the data and scientific literature. The public interest is not served by perpetuating a medical practice whose safety the agency admits was inadequately studied. Indeed, the public interest demands the opposite."