[You can find a ‘TL;DR’ summary at the bottom of the page]
For anyone confused by the fact that the total number of abortions in America could be on the rise despite red states enacting pro-life limits on when and how an abortion can be performed, the answer is simple: mail order abortion pills.
Supposing you don’t actually need an in-person doctor’s visit to get an abortion pill, and they can be discreetly sent through the mail, getting an abortion becomes as simple as ordering bottle of vitamins from Amazon.
Except this one, when taken correctly, results in a planned fatality.
There have been a series of rulings at different levels in this case including one where the standing of the plaintiffs had been called into question insofar as they could not show they had suffered any harm. The fact that this approach was being explicitly used as a workaround to bypass existing abortion laws in Louisiana was used by Louisiana to revive the case.
In October 2025, Louisiana filed its own lawsuit in federal court to seek the reinstatement of the in-person dispensing requirement. It emphasized that it had standing to sue because it had “incontrovertible evidence that … doctors and others are (as the Biden administration intended) sending streams of mifepristone by mail into Louisiana for the express purpose of causing thousands of abortions in Louisiana every year. That conduct directly violates Louisiana’s abortion laws, which – subject to very narrow exceptions (such as to save the life of the mother) – bar virtually all abortions, and prevents Louisiana from protecting the lives of unborn babies despite the promise of Dobbs” v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision holding that the Constitution does not confer a right to an abortion. “That conduct has directly generated medical emergencies that harm Louisiana women,” the state wrote, “and emergency room visits that harm the state.”
Rosalie Markezich, an individual plaintiff who joined the state’s lawsuit, said that in 2023 she was coerced into taking abortion drugs “that her boyfriend obtained via the U.S. Postal Service from a doctor in California.” If the in-person dispensing requirement had been in effect, she said, she “would have received the protection of a private in-person medical appointment,” during which she would “have been able to tell a doctor that she did not want an abortion.”
After a federal judge put the case on hold while the FDA conducts its own review of mifepristone’s safety, Louisiana went to the 5th Circuit, asking that court to re-impose the requirement while litigation continues. The court of appeals ruled that Louisiana has a right to sue because, by allowing mifepristone to be prescribed by telehealth and sent by mail, the “FDA ‘opened the door for mifepristone to be remotely prescribed to Louisiana women,’” even though Louisiana generally bars abortion. —SCOTUSBlog
Clearly, both sides are biased, since one side sees every abortion as the violent end of a human life, and the other side has at the micro level a belief this is a question of personal liberty to avoid an unwanted responsibility and at the macro level, a great deal of both financial and political capital at stake.
The pro-abortion side claims the pills are safe and any restriction of sending them by mail to red states that has enacted laws limiting abortion access is a violation of [insert one of several fallback arguments here].
Source: Clash Daily
