The main issue is the abortive drug and if it will be legal, or illegal in blue states.
By Catholics for Catholics
The next phase in the prolife wars may be decided in Louisiana’s Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, where on Wednesday oral arguments were heard that could decide if red states have the right to apply bans that could override blue states that allow abortion pills.
According to a story by the Washington Stand, The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in a case that may settle whether abortion pills can be legitimately mailed to states that have laws in place where they are prohibited.
Still, judges on the panel implied doubts as to whether the state of Louisiana had standing to challenge the Biden administration’s 2023 decision to remove the FDA’s in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone, which has developed in a powerful rise in at-home abortions, pills being sent into pro-life states, medical emergencies, and women being tricked and forced into swallowing the drug.
According to the Stand’s story, “effects like these are what Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill (R) points to in defense of her state’s ongoing lawsuit against the FDA, which she argues should give her state legal standing in its fight before the Fifth Circuit, where two judges appointed by former President Obama appear to be insisting they do not.”
“The Fifth Circuit panel could hardly have been more hostile toward Louisiana’s effort to protect women and enforce its laws protecting unborn children,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins noted in an X post Wednesday.
WATCH: "CA and NY can make different choices, but what they can't do is have doctors hide behind shield laws and mail [abortion] drugs into pro-life states. That violates the promise of Dobbs."
— Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) September 9, 2026
ADF Of Counsel Erin Hawley tells @CNN what's really at stake in Louisiana v. FDA. pic.twitter.com/Z5tb70O27i
“Our clearest argument on [legal standing] was the intent that was expressed by the Biden administration when they pushed this rule out right after Dobbs,” Murrill pointed out during “This Week on Capitol Hill.” “I mean, the whole point of it was to facilitate a superhighway of mail-order drugs that could be sent into our states, even though it’s illegal.”
After the seminal 2022 Dobbs Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe and returned abortion regulation to the states, the Biden administration, the Stand’s story noted, “pulled the rug out from under pro-life states by rescinding safeguards in place around the abortion pill mifepristone in January 2023, which required an in-person visit to a doctor before the drug could be prescribed. This safeguard ensured that a doctor could confirm that the woman was under the 10-week gestational limit required by the FDA and that the woman did not have an ectopic pregnancy, which could result in the death of the woman if mifepristone were to be taken.”
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