When the Supreme Court stopped an appeals court from blocking a federal rule allowing mail-order prescriptions of mifepristone while a legal challenge continues against the abortion pill's prescribing conditions, the high court extended the opportunity for abusive partners and parents to acquire the pill and secretly or coercively give it to women with wanted pregnancies. 

As criminal charges for nonconsensual administration of the pill grow, documented by Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America's tracking of cases nationwide, Louisiana is pressing the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rush legal proceedings and issue a final ruling on the Food and Drug Administration's regulatory changes, made after it curtailed safety data collection.

Both district and appellate judges agreed Louisiana faces "irreparable harm" every day the FDA's 2023 Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy for mifepristone remains, undermining its pro-life laws and forcing it to "spend Medicaid funds on emergency care for women harmed by mifepristone," the motion for expedited oral argument Monday says.

The 2023 REMS made a pandemic telehealth exception permanent, an explicit response to the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling ending federal abortion rights.

The government opposes the motion, which seeks a hearing the week of Aug. 31 "or on the next available oral argument calendar," the motion says.

The Department of Health and Human Services has not answered queries Monday to confirm it opposes expedited review, and if so to explain why, but the Justice Department has repeatedly argued that a ruling against the mail-order rule would upend the FDA's ongoing safety review of mifepristone, which critics allege the agency has slow-walked.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which plans to spend $160 million on pro-life candidates in midterm and presidential elections, twice demanded in recent days that acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche settle the lawsuit, adding "immediately" to its Monday missive.

It said Louisiana has three known criminal cases of alleged mifepristone coercion, most recently last week, when local news outlet KADN reported that Jamelle Kelly, 39, was arrested on felony charges of "attempted first-degree feticide and domestic abuse/battery of a pregnant victim." 

His daughter took the pill unknowingly at 23 weeks pregnant – long past mifepristone's regulatory window, initially set at seven weeks gestation but extended to 10 by the Obama administration – and required emergency cesarean surgery. The baby was born weighing a pound and remains hospitalized as of Friday, Carencro Police Chief David Anderson said.

Blanche must agree to a "court-ordered consent decree" ending the Biden administration's telehealth policy and "restore in-person dispensing immediately" while the FDA continues its safety review, SBA President Marjorie Dannenfelser said.

"Pro-life laws enacted following the Dobbs victory are effectively nullified, 15,000 babies in states with pro-life laws are killed every month, and women suffer physical and mental consequences in addition to abuse and coercion."

Her group recently shared nearly 20 cases nationwide of partners charged with and convicted of "poisoning" pregnant women with the pill. 

In The Daily Wire, Ohio's Jona Affholder said her partner "repeatedly pushed" her to abort, obtained mifepristone online "using his ex-wife's information" and forced "crushed drugs" in her mouth, causing miscarriage. Former surgeon Hassan-James Abbas, 32, pleaded no contest to felony charges and faces up to five years in prison at his June 24 sentencing.

Mifepristone facilitators routinely flout even the Obama administration's extended 10-week gestation window, according to a recent review of abortion drug directory Plan C by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a pro-life research group comparable to the abortion-rights movement's Guttmacher Institute.

Four-in-five participants "within the formal U.S. healthcare system that publicly report the gestational age at which they will ship abortion drugs" – including physical centers, "community networks" and online-only providers – are exceeding the 10-week limit, CLI said. Nearly a third who received FDA "abuse letters" in 2019 are still operating.

A peer-reviewed CLI study published last week in the prestigious journal PLoS One, based on a review of 179 online "narratives" and a subsequent survey of 362 women ages 23-55 who took medication abortion, found that many felt informed consent was lacking. Notably, three-in-10 reported "unexpected levels" of bleeding and pain. 

While women sought information from the internet about their abortions, 94% said they didn't want more information, suggesting they "may not recognize gaps in the information they received, raising concerns about true informed consent," CLI said. 

FDA relied on safety database it admits isn't reliable

Pro-life groups are hoping acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas is more receptive to their pleas than predecessor Marty Makary, who antagonized them early by saying he had "no plans" to restrict mifepristone despite its alleged 11% rate of serious adverse reactions.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. later promised a safety review to lawmakers, forcing Makary's hand but not his timing.

Diamantas told Live Action founder Lila Rose last month that he regretted representing Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando as an attorney in private practice and had requested to be removed from the case because of his pro-life views. 

The mifepristone safety review is a "top priority for him and the Trump administration FDA," Live Action paraphrased Diamantas telling Rose in their phone conversation.

HHS disputed Wall Street Journal reporting earlier this month that the FDA had just started the Kennedy-promised review, telling Reuters the agency "has been actively working on a ​science-based safety review of the mifepristone REMS for months."

The Journal reported that some officials expect preliminary results to be available internally in July but the full review to take six months, meaning after the midterm elections. Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., called it a "good first step" Monday.

Fourteen GOP attorneys general including Louisiana's Liz Murrill are also hoping for better luck with President Trump's Environmental Protection Agency, asking it to add mifepristone to the EPA's next "contaminant candidate list" because the "upsurge in home-setting chemical abortions has serious implications for the Safe Drinking Water Act."

If mifepristone "reaches sufficient concentration, pregnant women who unintentionally ingest the drug through the public water supply could be at greater risk of health complications than the general population," says the letter led by Missouri AG Catherine Hanaway.

The 5th Circuit opening brief by Louisiana AG Murrill and resident Rosalie Markezich, who claims her boyfriend forced her to take pills he obtained from a California doctor using her email address but was apparently never charged, emphasizes the FDA isn't defending the 2023 REMS as comporting with the Administrative Procedure Act.

Three appellate panels and two district judges determined the agency "arbitrarily concluded" that its FDA Adverse Event Reporting System supported removing in-person dispensing, when its "own public statements repeatedly acknowledge that FAERS data cannot be used to indicate drug safety" because reporting is voluntary, the brief says.

"Worse, FDA is responsible for the absence of probative data" since it eliminated the abortion drug providers' requirement to report "serious adverse events other than death" in 2016, when the deregulatory spree for mifepristone started.

It also relied on studies "not inconsistent" with its plans to remove in-person prescribing while admitting the literature did not "affirmatively" support its case, which "flunks the basic APA question of whether an agency’s action is reasoned and reasonable," the brief says.

Justice Clarence Thomas's dissent from SCOTUS blocking the 5th Circuit preliminary injunction, in reasoning seconded by 5th Circuit Judge James Ho, is also correct that the 2023 REMS flatly violates the Comstock Act, which prohibits "the shipment of abortion drugs." It's even worse because the intent is to facilitate shipments "from pro-abortion states into pro-life states."