brought against the FDA in October by Attorney General Liz Murrill<\/a>\u00a0and a Louisiana woman who alleged she felt coerced into taking pills that her boyfriend ordered. It argued that the FDA violated the Comstock Act, a 19th-century law that restricts the mailing of items intended for abortion, when it stopped requiring that the pills be distributed in person.<\/p>\nThe FDA has said it is conducting a safety review of mifepristone and asked the court to pause the case while that process is underway, but has not indicated whether it plans to change its current rules.<\/p>\n
The pause ordered by Joseph,\u00a0who was appointed in 2020 by President Donald Trump, is temporary. It allows the state to pursue restrictions after the FDA’s safety review is complete. Joseph also left the door open to rule in Louisiana\u2019s favor later, saying the state is \u201clikely to succeed on the merits” of their challenge to the FDA.<\/p>\n
Murrill said the state would continue with the case, pointing out that the judge also said Louisiana is unable to enforce its laws, causing \u201cirreparable harm.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAccordingly, under binding Fifth Circuit precedent, the only thing left to do is vacate the 2023 REMS pending the outcome of this litigation,\u201d Murrill said in a statement. \u201cWe will ask the Fifth Circuit to do so.”<\/p>\n
Abortions tied to Louisiana residents are rising, study says<\/p>\n
Louisiana\u2019s near-total abortion ban, enacted in 2022 after Dobbs v. Jackson Women\u2019s Health Organization, makes it illegal to perform most abortions in the state with limited exceptions for fetal anomalies or to save the life of the mother.<\/p>\n
The law is directed at providers within Louisiana but does not include the people who take the pills themselves or directly reach out-of-state doctors prescribing abortion pills via telehealth, a gap at the center of this legal challenge.<\/p>\n
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, abortions tied to Louisiana residents rose from about 7,410 in 2024 to 9,350 in 2025. In 2021, before Louisiana\u2019s ban was in place, 7,444 people received abortions in Louisiana.<\/p>\n
All of the 9,350 recorded by the Guttmacher Institute were telehealth abortions \u2014 meaning pills sent by doctors in states with shield laws that protect prescribing abortion medication across state lines \u2014 and do not include people who traveled from Louisiana to other states for abortions.<\/p>\n
The 9,350 figure is the number of prescriptions sent to Louisiana and does not track whether they were used. That number also does not include abortion pills sent from international organizations or received through informal networks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite Louisiana and many other states banning abortion after the Dobbs decision,\u00a0abortion numbers have remained relatively stable. But how people access care is shifting, especially in states where abortion is largely banned, said Kimya Forouzan, a principal state policy adviser at Guttmacher and author of the report.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople in this broad swath of states \u2026 are fairly far from a state where they can access care,\u201d Forouzan said. \u201cSo we have seen people increasingly access care via telehealth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Safety review<\/p>\n
Mifepristone was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000 and rules over its use have changed over time under the REMS program.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prior to 2021, mifepristone had to be taken in-person in Louisiana. That rule was suspended during the pandemic and made permanent in 2023.\u00a0A study\u00a0published in the Journal of the American Medical Association<\/a>\u00a0found the FDA relied on data and its standard review process when evaluating the drug\u2019s safety.<\/p>\nThe drug has been a lightning rod for groups that oppose abortion. In 2024, Louisiana classified it as a controlled dangerous substance alongside drugs like Xanax and fentanyl, placing restrictions on how it can be prescribed and dispensed.<\/p>\n
In his ruling, Joseph said the FDA’s REMS safety review must be completed by early October.\u00a0Any changes stemming from the review could determine whether telehealth access remains available or is restricted.<\/p>\n
Murrill is pursuing criminal cases against two doctors in California and New York accused of sending pills to patients in Louisiana. Those states have not been willing to have the doctors extradited to face the charges.<\/p>\n
Without telehealth, advocates said some may turn to less safe options or face more health risks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge in Lafayette declined to block, for now, the practice of accessing abortion pills in Louisiana…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":572928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[8803,97,252,253],"class_list":["post-572927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-hardwall","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=572927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/572927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/572928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=572927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=572927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=572927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}