Republican AGs Want to Arrest Blue State Doctors

7.30.25

Click to skip ahead: Attacks on Abortion Pills reminds you about the recent onslaught against abortion medication. Republican AGs Target Shield Laws reports that sixteen attorneys general are lobbying Congress to let them prosecute out-of-state providers. Meet the Creeps lays out how bad these GOP AGs really are. FDA Chief Drops Mifepristone Hint examines Marty Makary’s most recent comments on mifepristone. In the States, news from Wisconsin, South Dakota, Ohio, California, Oregon, and more. In the Nation has news on the Florida Republican running for RNC chair and the 20+ Dem AGs suing the Trump administration over the ‘defunding’ of Planned Parenthood. Finally, Policing Pregnancy looks at doctors arrested in Poland and asks—will that happen here?

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Attacks on Abortion Pills

We all know that Republicans are desperate to stop abortion medication: one in four abortions in America are provided via telehealth, allowing women to end their pregnancies in spite of state bans. So it makes sense that they’ve been coming after the pills ever since Roe was overturned.

But their attacks have seriously ramped up recently, and I’m going to take you through a few new big stories—including the FDA chief dropping a key hint about how the agency might limit mifepristone, and a group of Republican attorneys general pressuring Congress to put an end to shield laws.

First, though, it’s worth looking at a few of the ways conservatives have attacked abortion medication just in the last week:

• The country’s leading anti-abortion lawyer has sued a California provider on behalf of a Texas man who says the doctor shipped abortion pills to his girlfriend. The goal is to take both shield laws and the Comstock Act all the way to the Supreme Court.

• Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is suing Planned Parenthood Federation of America, claiming that the organization lied about the safety of abortion medication. He wants to stop Planned Parenthood from even talking about the pills.

• And Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing a New York county clerk who refused to file a summons ordering an abortion provider in the state to appear in a Texas court.

That’s to say nothing of the ongoing threat to abortion medication via Trump’s budget bill and every other bullshit policy the administration is pushing. So that’s the broader context we’re working with here—rapidly increasing attacks, coming from all different directions. Which leads us to today…

Republican AGs Target Shield Laws

A group of sixteen Republican attorneys general have gone on offense over shield laws and abortion pills—sending a letter to Congress, urging them to allow for the prosecution of providers who ship pills across state lines.

The AGs write that shield laws are “blatant attempts to interfere with States’ ability to enforce criminal laws within their borders and disrupt our constitutional structure.”

“By encouraging medical professionals in pro-abortion states to violate pro-life States’ abortion laws, shield laws are antithetical to the spirit of federalism and the Dobbs decision by not allowing each State to regulate abortion as it sees fit.”

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, who led the charge, told THV11 that they’re asking lawmakers to “step in and have one federal law that would stop [shield laws] and allow the states to individually enforce their own laws without interference from other states. So, yeah, they would basically stop them from passing the shield laws.”

The other AGs who signed onto the letter were from Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

But that’s not all! Arkansas AG Griffin also sent four cease-and-desist letters to groups that ship abortion pills to the state, or advertise the medication: two telehealth companies, a domain registry, and a domain host. In the letters, Griffin demands that the companies stop shipping or advertising abortion pills, claiming that their “business practices may constitute false, deceptive, and unconscionable trade practices under the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.”

Why ‘deceptive’? Well, Griffin says that the companies advertise the pills as “safe” but that “a recent study” shows that they’re not. You’ll never guess what study he’s referring to! That’s right, the junk science mifepristone research published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center—a ‘study’ that has been thoroughly debunked.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because Griffin’s claims are very similar to the ones made by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who is using the same bullshit science to sue Planned Parenthood.

In other words, these assholes are organized: they’re working closely with anti-abortion organizations, and are beyond eager to start punishing doctors, patients, funds, and anyone else they can get their hands on.

Meet the Creeps

Just a quick aside to remind you who these Republican attorneys general who signed the letter to Congress really are.

Arkansas AG Griffin led the effort last year to stop advocates from putting an abortion rights measure on the ballot even though they collected more than enough signatures. Alabama’s attorney general Steve Marshall spent years threatening to criminalize abortion funds after Dobbs, and planned to arrest medication abortion patients by charging them with “chemical endangerment” of a child. (That’s a story AED broke, btw!)

Then there’s Texas AG Ken Paxton, who is unfortunately something of a fixture in our reporting here, because he’s done it all: recruit shitty men to sue over their partners’ abortions, wage legal harassment campaigns against abortion funds, and—through it all—find time to prolifically cheat on his soon-to-be-ex-wife.

Idaho’s Raúl Labrador effectively argued to the Supreme Court that his state has the right to let women with pregnancy complications die; Todd Rokita in Indiana is currently trying to make abortion reports public records; Louisiana AG Lizz Murrill is trying to throw a mother in jail for purchasing abortion pills for her daughter; and Iowa AG Brenna Bird blocked the state from covering emergency contraception for rape victims.

We could go on, but you get the point. They’re like the Avengers, but ugly.

FDA Chief Drops Mifepristone Hint

In a recent interview with POLITICO, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary claimed he has “no preconceived plans” to take action on mifepristone. But let’s take a brief look back at what happened the last time Makary insisted he had no “plans” to restrict abortion medication.

In an April interview with Semafor, Makary said he had “no plans to take action” on abortion pills—but he also made a seemingly-offhand comment about the possibility of new studies on the medication.

“If the data suggests something, or tells us that there’s a real signal, we can’t promise we’re not going to act on that data that we have not yet seen.”

A few days later, the EPPC dropped their now-infamous junk science research on mifepristone. What a coincidence! Given Makary has a habit of dropping hints about anti-abortion strategy on mifepristone, let’s take a closer look at what he said to POLITICO.

Trump’s FDA appointee once again mentioned “safety data,” saying that “a new drug-drug interaction with mifepristone could emerge in the data, in which case we’d have to take action on it.”

Now, this isn’t the first time Makary has mentioned the possibility of a drug interaction influencing the FDA’s decision to restrict mifepristone. During a terse exchange with Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Makary said that when looking at studies on the drug, “there could be, for example, a drug-drug interaction that may show up on the data.”

What does that mean? We can’t say for sure yet—but it’s possible Makary is expecting an anti-abortion group to come out with a ‘study’ about drug interactions with mifepristone. And maybe the Trump administration thinks that will be better-received than the EPPC’s junk science disaster.

Makary also repeated another conservative message on abortion—this time about ’coercion’. Here’s what he told POLITICO:

“We’re going to continue to listen to folks that say they have concerns about coercion of girls who are pregnant. That is, they’re being forced to take mifepristone that’s available outside the prescribing authority of a physician, or an abusive power imbalance from the male in the relationship”

As you all know by now, ‘coercion’ has become Republicans’ fastest-growing abortion talking point: Back in 2023, anti-abortion activists identified it as the GOP’s most promising talking point because “no one is openly in favor of coerced abortions.”

Given those two hints, I’ll be keeping a close eye on the usual suspects—the Charlotte Lozier Institute, SBA Pro-Life America, the EPPC, etc—for any new ‘studies’ on coercion and drug interactions. Hit me up if you notice anything!

In the States

Well this is gross: Wisconsin Republicans are planning to introduce legislation that would mandate doctors report the sex of an aborted fetus to the state, along with any fetal anomalies. Rep. Chuck Wichgers and Sen. André Jacque are shopping the legislation around for co-sponsors, claiming that Wisconsin’s abortion reporting standards aren’t up to par.

Their bill would mandate that doctors report a fetus’ sex if it “can be determined by visual inspection,” and would “establish and maintain an up-to-date registry that documents” abortions involving “any unborn child who has a fetal anomaly or any infant or child who has a birth defect.”

The language of the bill is deliberately inflammatory—meant both to stigmatize and to expand state surveillance of abortion. AED has been tracking the increase in abortion reporting requirements: In Indiana, for examples, Republicans want to build publicly-available registries of abortion patients. And in Ohio, the GOP wants a public dashboard of abortion reports.

Speaking of abortion reporting: South Dakota reports zero abortions in 2024, but that’s not really true. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that 460 South Dakotans traveled out of state to access abortion, and another 350 received abortion pills by mail.

No one should have to leave their community or jump through hoops for abortion. But what this data makes clear is that no matter how hard anti-abortion politicians try, people are going to find a way to get the care they need.

Meanwhile, two clinics in the Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region remain closed even after a judge on Monday blocked the “defund” provision of Trump’s budget bill. A spokesperson for the affiliate explained that while the ruling is welcome news, “unfortunately for many smaller affiliates, the risk of the federal government requesting back pay if the injunction expires is still too great.”

This is just another example of the devastating chaos that reproductive health providers—and, consequently, their patients—are forced to navigate thanks to the GOP’s funding games. This is Republicans’ goal: to shutter as many clinics as possible, serving as a backdoor abortion ban.

And it isn’t just Ohio: five Planned Parenthood clinics in California that had to shut their doors due to budget struggles will also remain closed.

Let’s end with some good state news—this time out of Oregon. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden announced this week that he’s secured an agreement with license plate reader company Flock to ensure that data on potential abortion seekers and immigrants will be kept safe from law enforcement agencies. (You may remember Flok as the company that helped Texas cops track an abortion patient.)

Wyden says he took action after learning that no existing laws in Oregon govern how license plate data is used:

“Oregonians should never be driving in fear that automatic license plate reader cameras installed by police departments could be abused by anti-abortion forces in other states or by Donald Trump's authoritarian deployment of immigration agents.”

Wyden, who led the charge to stop data brokers from accessing and selling abortion patients’ data last year, pledged to keep an eye on Flock: “I’ll keep watchdogging this company’s commitment to make sure it’s carried out throughout our state.”

Quick hits:

• More on the Texas lawsuit targeting a California abortion provider from Rewire and The Guardian;

• On the one year anniversary of Iowa passing a 6-week ban, OBGYN Dr. Emily Boevers shares how the law hurts doctors and patients;

• Finally, a bench trial has been set in Missouri over the language in Republicans’ ballot measure seeking to ban abortion. (The state GOP wrote the measure to sound downright pro-choice in order to trick voters.)

In the Nation

Not all attorneys general are anti-abortion assholes: nearly two dozen Democratic AGs sued the Trump administration this week over its efforts to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood.

The suit argues that the Republican budget bill retaliates against the organization for providing abortions, and violates the First Amendment. (This is precisely what a federal judge ruled this week in a separate suit brought by Planned Parenthood.)

The AGs are asking that the ‘defunding’ provision be deemed unconstitutional and blocked.

“We won’t sit back while Congress and this federal administration tries to roll back our progress, silence their opposition and ignore the rule of law,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

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For more on the Republican budget bill and its attack on Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health care centers, read AED’s explainer:

Senate Republicans’ ‘Big, Beautiful’ Backdoor Ban

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Remember Florida state Sen. Joe Gruters, the architect of the state’s six-week ban that effectively eradicated abortion access across the entire South? Or maybe you remember him as the state senator who faced a sexual harassment complaint in 2021.

Well, Gruters is currently auditioning for a new gig with the full backing from fellow sexual predator Donald Trump: He’s running for RNC chair. Suffice to say, we’ll be keeping an eye on him.

Contrary to all of Trump’s efforts to distance himself from his own anti-abortion extremism, it speaks volumes that this is his pick to run the RNC: the architect of one of the most devastating abortion bans in the nation.

Finally, the Associated Press reports that former North Carolina governor Roy Cooper is running for a U.S. Senate seat. Cooper is a long-time abortion rights ally, and I remember how he tried to find one single Republican to do the right thing back in 2023 to stop the North Carolina ban: “All we need is one,” he said at the time. “One person of conscience.”

You all know how that turned out. Apparently Republicans are already planning to paint Cooper as an abortion rights extremist, which (of course) is nothing new. But I’m hoping Cooper’s campaign pushes back hard—because we need Dems to go just as strong on their repro messaging this time around.

Quick hits:

• Trump judicial nominee Chad Meredith faced questions from Democrats about his anti-abortion record;

• And Americans are still (understandably!) furious that the Trump administration is set to burn nearly $10 million of birth control.

Policing Pregnancy

We don’t usually cover international stories, but this latest news out of Poland is worth talking about: Three doctors have been found guilty of endangering the life of a 30-year-old woman who died after being denied emergency abortion care. Two will get prison time.

The woman died in 2021, POLITICO reports, after a hospital waited too long to end her nonviable pregnancy and she developed sepsis. The details mirror the horror stories we’ve seen here in the U.S.—and may give us an uncomfortable glimpse into the future of criminalization here.

If you’re a regular reader, you know that anti-abortion organizations have been working overtime to blame doctors for post-Dobbs suffering and deaths. The conservative claim—one they’ve been working on for years—is that healthcare providers misunderstand the law. Some Republicans, like Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, have even argued that doctors deliberately withhold health- and life-saving care from critically ill women in order to make a political point.

In order to drive that argument home, anti-abortion lawmakers have been rolling out bills that claim to “clarify” exceptions for doctors and lobbying for ‘Med Ed’ laws that they say will help doctors understand when they can provide care. (In reality, these laws codify the idea that abortion is never necessary to save someone’s life.)

Undoubtedly, doctors could and should act to save their patients’ lives—but the devastating reality that anti-abortion officials want to conceal is that these deaths are the consequences of abortion bans, not healthcare providers. And when you shroud an essential health service in criminality, people will die.