WASHINGTON, D.C. – 259 Democrat members of Congress have signed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reject Louisiana’s ongoing bid to restore pre-Biden abortion pill safety restrictions.
Last fall, Louisiana sued the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) over its Biden-era removal of the requirement that abortion drugs be dispensed in-person, which drastically expanded their usage, encroached on state law, and harmed women such as co-plaintiff Rosalie Markezich.
In response, the Trump administration has urged the court to at least temporarily deny relief to Louisiana and Markezich, arguing that they lacked legal standing and claiming that a judgment in the case would cause a “disruption” with the agency’s alleged ongoing review of the abortion pill, which U.S. Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised in May 2025 (which is currently slated to be completed sometime after the midterm congressional elections). The administration argued that the review’s conclusion could render the lawsuit unnecessary if the agency ultimately decides to restore the in-person dispensing requirement on its own.
This past May, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to allow abortion pills to continue being distributed indefinitely while the suit works its way through the lower courts.
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On July 23, a group of Democrats led by Sens. Patty Murray (WA), Chuck Schumer (NY), and Ron Wyden (OR) and Reps. Hakeem Jeffries (NY), Katherine Clark (MA), Frank Pallone Jr. (NJ), Diana DeGette (CO), Jamie Raskin (MD), and Ayanna Pressley (MA) filed an amicus brief urging the Fifth Circuit to reject Louisiana’s challenge on the grounds that “mifepristone has undergone a rigorous FDA approval process and has repeatedly been found to be safe and effective.”
“The in-person dispensing requirement was first suspended by a court in 2020 and later eliminated altogether by the FDA in 2021, before Dobbs came down,” they argue. “Louisiana knows these facts but continues to make this spurious claim in its attempt to reimpose an unnecessary burden on all Americans, even residents of states that protect abortion. Decades after FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone and years after the in-person dispensing requirement was eliminated, Louisiana now seeks to re-impose this onerous nationwide restriction on all Americans.”
“Granting such relief would undermine the science-based statutory framework Congress requires and threatens patient access to reproductive health care,” the Democrats continue. “As has been well documented, many Americans in states where abortion is legal live far from any reproductive health care provider. Reinstating an in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone exacerbates an already significant reproductive health crisis by limiting access to the most common method of early abortion.”
Pro-lifers dispute such claims, pointing to a wealth of evidence indicating the pills are far from harmless to women even when taken with medical supervision.
Pro-lifers point to an April 2025 analysis by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) which concluded that almost 11 percent of women suffer sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other major conditions after taking mifepristone, according to insurance data, plus similar findings by the Restoration of America Foundation, as part of a “growing body of evidence indicating that the health risks associated with mifepristone abortions are severe, widespread, and significantly underreported.”
Those risks are only magnified, pro-lifers warn, when the pills are allowed to be taken in complete privacy, without medical supervision or close access to emergency services, for no other reason than to evade state pro-life laws.
Thirteen states ban most abortions starting at conception; another five ban it around 6 weeks, with additional states imposing a range of later restrictions.
Mail-order pills have become the abortion lobby’s most potent tool for circumventing these laws and preserving abortion without Roe v. Wade. The latest data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute found 1,125,930 clinical abortions in 2025, a slight increase from 2024, which Guttmacher attributed in large part to abortion pills. Planned Parenthood’s 2024–2025 annual report boasts it alone committed 434,450 abortions, a record number for the organization and eight percent more than the previous year.
