Banning abortion inside their own states wasn't enough. Now three Republican attorneys general want the U.S. Supreme Court to let them go after doctors in other states, too.
On Wednesday, September 30, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced that they had sued California, Massachusetts and New York directly in the Supreme Court. They are asking the justices to throw out those states' "shield laws," which protect doctors who prescribe and mail abortion medication to patients in states that ban abortion.
They also filed a second lawsuit in federal court in Louisiana against 30 individual providers and organizations, including Dr. Remy Coeytaux in California and the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project and its founder.
What a shield law does
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, 13 states now have near-total abortion bans, and others have expanded access. In 2023, the Food and Drug Administration, after years of safety studies, allowed mifepristone, one of the two pills commonly used to end an early pregnancy or treat a miscarriage, to be prescribed without an in-person visit.
That means a doctor in a state where abortion is legal can see a patient by telehealth and mail the pills. Twenty-two states and Washington, D.C., including California, Massachusetts and New York, have passed shield laws that block out-of-state investigations and prosecutions of those doctors.
Louisiana has already tried to haul them in. Murrill indicted New York's Dr. Margaret Carpenter for prescribing pills to a Louisiana teenager, and tried in January to extradite Coeytaux from California. The governors of those states refused.
"Louisiana has changed their laws, but that has no bearing on the laws here in the state of New York," New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said at the time. "I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana. Not now, not ever."
So now the Republican AGs want the Supreme Court to override those states for them. Their argument is that shield laws violate the Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause, which generally requires states to respect each other's laws and court proceedings.
Anthrax, mail bombs, fentanyl and crawfish
The way they describe safe, FDA-approved medicine tells you how far this has gone.
The Supreme Court complaint compares mailing abortion medication to anthrax, mail bombs and chemical weapons, Stateline reported. At their news conference, Murrill said, "It is no different than if they were sending fentanyl in these boxes."
Griffin said, "There's nothing about these mail order abortions that even remotely look like healthcare," and added, "You can call a crawfish a shrimp all you want, but it's still a crawfish."
Mifepristone and misoprostol are considered safe and effective when used as prescribed, the Louisiana Illuminator noted, and studies since 2000 have found the same.
Who this is really aimed at
The attorneys general said themselves how many people are getting these pills: about 800 medication abortions a month in Louisiana, 300 in Arkansas and 500 in Alabama. That's about 1,600 a month across three states where the bans these officials enforce leave no legal option at home.
Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama all ban abortion at every stage, with a narrow exception when the pregnant woman's life is at risk. Doctors have warned those exceptions are too narrow to use in practice.
This lawsuit is also not the only front. Murrill is leading a separate case against the FDA to roll back telehealth access to mifepristone nationwide, and similar suits are under way in Missouri and Texas. The 5th Circuit heard arguments in Louisiana's case this month.
We've written before about how this fight reaches into California's governor's race, where the Republican candidate spent the primary saying he'd hand Coeytaux over to Louisiana before reversing himself, and about the part of the right that now wants to jail women for having abortions.
The bottom line
On September 30, the Republican attorneys general of Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama announced they had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down the California, Massachusetts and New York laws that protect doctors who mail abortion pills, and sued 30 providers in federal court. Their complaint compares an FDA-approved medication to anthrax and mail bombs. By their own count, there are about 1,600 medication abortions a month in their three states.
Source
Stateline: "Republican AGs sue abortion 'shield law' states in US Supreme Court"
