(The Center Square) – Following the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s surprise approval of a generic version of mifepristone, leading anti-abortion advocates and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill are calling for immediate federal action to halt the mail-order distribution of abortion drugs.
During a press call organized by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Murrill joined President Marjorie Dannenfelser and abortion drug poisoning survivor Catherine Herring to warn that mail-order abortion access has created serious dangers for women and opened the door to coercive and criminal abuse.
Murrill said her office has filed a new lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s regulations that loosened restrictions on abortion pills, allowing them to be prescribed via telemedicine and sent by mail.
“In Louisiana we have a bipartisan Legislature that is incredibly pro-life,” Murrill said. “They’ve passed laws that protect women and children and prohibit the use of these drugs for inducing an abortion. Yet our market is now being flooded with these pills.”
Murrill said the FDA’s approval of a generic mifepristone “was shocking,” calling it “completely unnecessary and unsupported by the data,” and said the decision came “at the 11th hour right before a government shutdown.”
“These drugs are dangerous for women – especially now that they are being taken without medical supervision,” Murrill added. “They’ve been used in multiple cases to poison or coerce women into abortions against their consent.”
Herring, a Texas woman who survived an attempted poisoning by her husband using abortion drugs, shared her story as part of the call.
Herring recounted that in 2022, shortly after learning she was pregnant, her husband gave her “breakfast in bed” and urged her to drink a cup of water that appeared milky. Minutes later, she began suffering severe cramping and bleeding.
After recalling an article about abortion pill reversal, she called a pregnancy hotline and began progesterone treatment under guidance from medical staff. She credits that intervention with saving her baby’s life.
“My urine was black in color when I arrived at the emergency room,” Herring said. “They thought I was going into kidney failure.”
Herring later discovered her husband had tried to poison her six more times over 39 days. He was caught on hidden camera mixing a crushed powder into her drink and was arrested by Houston police in May 2022.
“What man meant for evil, God meant for good,” Herring said. “I hope by sharing my story, women can better identify and protect themselves from coerced abortion.”
Asked about a new California law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom allowing prescribers of abortion drugs to omit their names from prescriptions, Murrill said the measure would make it harder to investigate cross-state criminal cases.
“They are being abused now, and this will make it more difficult to determine who’s sending and prescribing them,” she said. “These laws create a superhighway to send illegal drugs into our states that hurt women and their babies.”
Murrill cited a recent Louisiana case where a New York doctor and clinic were indicted. The physicians are accused of mailing abortion pills to a minor’s mother, who then coerced her daughter into taking them.
“The governor of New York is blocking extradition,” Murrill said of Gov. Kathy Hochul, adding that her office is preparing a similar case involving a California doctor.
Dannenfelser urged the Biden administration to “immediately restore the first Trump administration’s rules” requiring in-person medical supervision for abortion pills.
“Reintroduce the doctor into the conversation, and you will not have any more stories like Catherine’s,” she said. “This is an easy fix. There’s no legal reason it hasn’t happened.”
Dannenfelser also pressed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary for answers about a promised federal study on the safety of mail-order abortion drugs.
