(LifeSiteNews) — A group of women traumatized by their experiences with abortion pills is urging the Trump administration to abandon its defense of Biden-era regulations and settle with Louisiana and its lawsuit seeking to keep the deadly pills outside of its borders.

Last fall, Louisiana sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over its removal of the requirement that abortion drugs be dispensed in-person that drastically expanded their usage, encroached on state law, and harmed women such as co-plaintiff Rosalie Markezich.

“Rosalie took abortion drugs that her boyfriend obtained via the U.S. Postal Service from a doctor in California. Rosalie did not want to have an abortion,” the lawsuit says. “But far from empowering Rosalie to make her own choice and preserving her autonomy, mail-order abortion drugs had Rosalie feeling trapped and terrified. She grieves the loss of her child and endures lasting emotional trauma.”

The change “directly violates Louisiana’s abortion laws and prevents Louisiana from protecting the lives of unborn babies despite the promise of Dobbs,” Louisiana says. “That conduct also has directly generated medical emergencies that harm Louisiana women and emergency room visits that harm the State.”

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. 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.

On July 8, a group of 14 women – Tramelle Jones, Sara Huff, Elizabeth Henschel, Dora Rhode Esparza, Jannette Houston, Grace Cardoso, Abby Johnson, Kelly Lester, Erin Woods, Alani Harmon, Haile McAnally, Shanyce Thomas, McKenzie Kaupa-Thiesse, and Jessica Willi – signed a letter to Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche calling on the U.S. Justice Department to back down.

“We grieve with Rosalie because many of us recognize parts of our own stories in hers: the pressure, the confusion, the fear, the absence of real medical care, and the feeling that the system was designed to move drugs faster than it was designed to protect women. No woman should be forced, pressured, deceived, or abandoned into taking drugs that end her child’s life and place her own health at risk,” they write.

“Acting Attorney General Blanche, we respectfully but urgently ask you to side with Rosalie Markezich and settle her legal case immediately so abortion drugs are no longer sent through the mail in ways that put women at risk,” they say. “The federal government should not defend policies that make it easier for men, abusers, traffickers, or anyone else to obtain abortion drugs in a woman’s name and pressure her to take them in isolation.”

“Rosalie’s courage should not be met with delay, dismissal, or continued litigation that leaves the same dangerous mail-order system in place. It should be met with action,” the letter states. “Settling this case would send a clear message that women’s safety matters, that coercion is real, that state laws protecting women and unborn children deserve respect, and that the Department of Justice will not ignore the real-world consequences of weakened abortion-drug safeguards.”

Thirteen states ban most abortions starting at conception; another five ban it around six 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.

The abortion lobby’s zeal to make abortion pills as easy as possible to distribute and obtain disregards a wealth of evidence indicating they 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.”

Pro-lifers are currently waiting to see how the Louisiana suit will turn out, before the Trump administration review is finally concluded. The review reportedly commenced last month, with a timetable ensuring the findings will not be released before this fall’s midterm congressional elections.

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