BREAKING: Louisiana Seeks to Extradite California Abortion Provider

Attorney General Liz Murrill accuses Dr. Remy Coeytaux of "drug dealing"

In September, Abortion, Every Day broke the news that Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill had signed an arrest warrant for California abortion provider Dr. Remy Coeytaux, accusing him of illegally mailing abortion pills into the state. Today, the Republican AG ramped up her efforts—making a splashy social media announcement that she’s signed an extradition request for Coeytaux.

“This is not healthcare; it’s drug dealing,” she said. Coeytaux is charged with violating a Louisiana statute banning “criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducing drugs,” and faces up to 50 years of hard labor.

Coeytaux is the second abortion provider Louisiana has targeted with criminal charges and extradition. In January 2025, a grand jury indicted New York provider Dr. Maggie Carpenter on felony abortion charges, with Murrill signing an extradition order a few weeks later:

Louisiana Indicts New York Abortion Provider, Arrests Mother

At the time, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said “there’s no way in hell” she would extradite Carpenter. We’re awaiting comment from California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office on Louisiana’s extradition request; but like New York, California has shield laws that protect abortion providers from out-of-state prosecution and extradition.

Last year, attorney Alejandra Caraballo, co-author of the 2023 CUNY law review article Extradition in Post-Roe America, told me that abortion-related extradition requests take us into uncharted territory—and could wind up at the Supreme Court:

“We haven’t really seen this kind of disparity in state laws around human rights since the Civil War, where, what constitutes a human right in one state, constitutes a capital crime in another. The federal Constitution is not set up to manage that. The last time we had this kind of disparity led to the full breakdown of calamity of the states, to the Civil War.”

There’s been a race among conservative attorneys general to get shield laws in front of SCOTUS, so this is exactly what Murrill wants. That’s why she isn’t just targeting providers: in a video posted on X today, Murrill promised that her office would “pursue actions against those states that are shielding those doctors and are illegally trying to nullify our laws.”

The timing of all of this couldn’t be better for Murrill, who’s set to testify before the Senate on Wednesday about the supposed danger of abortion pills and telehealth access.

As we noted this week, AED expects Murrill to go all in on her claims that providers like Coeytaux and Carpenter are “drug dealers”—and that by shipping abortion pills, they enable abusive men to coerce or force their partners into abortions.

In her statement today, for example, she said that providers who ship pills are putting women in danger: “We’ve seen the proof of that, with women showing up in emergency rooms after taking these pills and being coerced into abortions.”

Murrill’s mention of “women showing up in emergency rooms”—which we just flagged as a talking point to watch out for—is especially telling. Republicans have been touting an anti-abortion pseudoscience ‘study’ that claims to expose the danger of abortion pills, with repeated messaging that abortion pills land more women in emergency rooms. They don’t mention that there’s a big difference between visiting the ER and being treated at the ER. (Read all about that here, here, and here.)

The other talking point AED is watching out for is that lie that telehealth access to abortion pills allows for forced abortion. Anti-abortion leaders identified ‘coercion’ as Republicans’ most promising talking point in 2023, noting that “no one is openly in favor of coerced abortions.” Since then, the term has been everywhere—even as we’ve reported again and again how abortion bans, not abortion access, endanger abuse victims.

In fact, when AED first uncovered the arrest warrant against Coeytaux, it was in a lawsuit seeking to ban telemedicine abortion access—a case brought by Louisiana and an alleged victim of coerced abortion. Rosalie Markezich alleges her abusive boyfriend ordered abortion pills from Coeytaux in October 2023, and later forced her to take them.

The Guardian flags that while the documents released today accuse Coeytaux of mailing pills to a woman in October 2023, they don’t say anything about coercion. Murrill’s office declined to say whether the extradition request relates to Markezich’s case, and whether ‘coercion’ was involved.

A spokesperson did say, however, that “more indictments could be coming.”

This is a developing story, and we’ll have more for you in tonight’s daily report.