*Another* Mifepristone Lawsuit

12.10.25

Click to skip ahead: In Legislation Watch, the insidious legislation Congress claims will protect children—but could actually ban online abortion info. In the Courts, yet *another* lawsuit calling on the FDA to revoke approval of mifepristone. In Stats and Studies, more data on how abortion bans are putting women’s lives at risk. In Criminalizing Care, updates in the legal harassment of a California abortion provider. In the States, news in Colorado, Michigan, and Maryland. And in Policing Pregnancy, an update in Brittany Watts’ landmark pregnancy criminalization case.

---

Legislation Watch

The biggest thorn in the anti-abortion movement’s side is online information and resources helping people access abortion pills—and they know this. That’s why states like Texas and South Carolina have weighed bills to ban internet providers from hosting abortion rights websites. Now Congress is considering bipartisan legislation that could have a similar impact without ever mentioning abortion.

On Thursday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on KOSA, the so-called Kids Online Safety Act, which easily passed the Senate last year. The bill claims to protect children from sexually explicit online content, but reproductive rights and civil liberties advocates warn that Republicans would likely use it to block abortion information—for everyone.

As usual, young people are the canaries in the coal mine.

For details on how KOSA could harm abortion access, check out this explainer from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). In short, it empowers the federal government and state attorneys general to restrict online speech under the guise of protecting kids from “harm.” Under the Trump administration—and with Project 2025 well underway—it’s not just possible that KOSA would be used to ban pro-choice speech, but likely. Republican lawmakers and the Heritage Foundation are already talking about weaponizing the legislation to ‘protect’ minors from LGBTQ and pro-choice content.

Fight for the Future’s Sarah Philips tells AED:

“Congress insists this is about kids’ safety, but more censorship and surveillance of abortion information does not protect kids. It’s a win for anti-abortion lawmakers... More than anything, it endangers youth who live in states where abortion care, gender-affirming healthcare, and sex ed are criminalized and deanonymizes the internet, putting all abortion seekers at risk.”

Under KOSA, websites could be forced to require age verification—blocking minors from accessing vital sexual-health information and robbing all of us of the ability to search for abortion care anonymously.

In fact, Congress is currently weighing nearly two dozen (19) bills that involve online age verification requirements. (Wired notes that about half of the country already lives under age verification laws limiting access to so-called “harmful” content—policies that have been widely panned by digital and human rights groups.)

If anything, young people—especially young people living under abortion bans—are more endangered by legislation like KOSA, which threatens to block them from life-saving online resources.

Fight for the Future has more on how to take action.

In the Courts

Here we go again: Texas and Florida just filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas—home to anti-abortion extremist Matthew J. Kacsmaryk—demanding that the FDA:

• revoke the 2000 approval of mifepristone;

• ban telemedicine provision of abortion pills;

• and revoke approval of two generic versions of mifepristone.

This suit comes after both states tried unsuccessfully to join an existing, similar suit brought by the attorneys general of Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho. Louisiana is also suing the FDA over mifepristone. Like those suits, the filing from Texas and Florida is filled with inflammatory disinformation about abortion—from citing the EPPC’s junk science report to saying mifepristone “starves the baby to death in the womb.”

The new suit follows a run of developments that have infuriated anti-abortion activists—like the FDA’s entirely routine and apolitical approval of generic mifepristone, and this week’s news that the agency was delaying its bogus ‘safety study’ of mifepristone. As a result, some anti-abortion leaders are now calling for the removal of FDA commissioner Marty Makary.

We know exactly why anti-abortion states are this determined to stop abortion pills: new data reveals almost every single abortion in states with bans are medication abortions provided via telehealth. The end goal, after all, is to trap everyone under state abortion bans.

For more on the ongoing legal attacks on mifepristone, read our explainer below:

The GOP's Attack on Abortion Pills is Here

In other bleak news, the Senate voted this week to confirm anti-abortion extremist William Crain to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. As the National Women’s Law Center has highlighted, Crain’s dubious record on Louisiana’s Supreme Court includes allowing the state’s trigger laws to take effect, and further punishing an incarcerated woman who said she faced extreme retaliation for supporting a fellow inmate who was sexually assaulted by prison staff.

Crain will now serve a lifetime appointment on the federal bench. NWLC warns that his record shows he’s “less concerned with equal justice under the law and more concerned with how to force his ideology on the rest of the country, putting the country one step closer to a nationwide abortion ban.”

Stats and Studies

A new study reports that anti-abortion states have seen a “substantial” increase in pregnancy-related violations of EMTALA—the federal law that requires hospital emergency rooms to provide patients with life-saving and stabilizing care (including abortions).

The research, published in Jama Health Forum, found that anti-abortion states without exceptions for women’s health—Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas—saw an additional 1.18 pregnancy-related violations of EMTALA per quarter after their bans took effect.

These numbers might not sound all that imposing on the surface. But this amounts to five additional EMTALA violations per state each year. Each of these violations could all too easily result in pregnant patients dying—an outcome we’re increasingly seeing in banned states. Lead author and Tufts University professor Liana Woskie, says, “Each reflects a confirmed case in which a patient did not receive the emergency care they were entitled to.”

Emergency abortion care shouldn’t be controversial, but the issue has taken center stage since the end of Roe. Just last year, Idaho went all the way to the Supreme Court to fight for the right to deny women emergency abortions. And even though the White House doesn’t have the power to erase EMTALA protections, the Trump administration all but told anti-abortion states earlier this year that they don’t have to adhere to the federal law.

Criminalizing Care

Remember when Jonathan Mitchell filed a lawsuit against a California doctor, Remy Coeytaux, for allegedly mailing abortion pills to a woman in Texas? That case—which accuses Coeytaux of murder and invoked the Comstock Act—remains ongoing. But we have some updates.

Per the San Francisco Chronicle, Mitchell is expected to file an amended complaint against the California provider invoking Texas’ HB7, which bans the shipment of abortion pills into the state. California AG Rob Bonta declined to comment to the Chronicle on his planned course of action.

As a refresher: Mitchell and his client, Jerry Rodriguez, accuse Coeytaux of mailing pills that were allegedly used to coerce a woman (Rodriguez’s current partner) into abortion. Coeytaux is also being targeted by Louisiana: In September, AED broke the news that Attorney General Liz Murrill wants to extradite the provider; she also accuses him of mailing abortion pills that were later used in a coerced abortion.

Legal harassment and attempts to equate abortion pills with ‘coercion’ have become a top line of attack against abortion pills. We know why: As the latest #WeCount data shows, essentially all abortions in banned states are now facilitated via telehealth. Anti-abortion leaders hope one of these lawsuits, like Mitchell’s against Coeytaux, will eventually land at the Supreme Court and end shield law protections. (Invoking the protection of women and domestic violence is just a way to hide their obvious misogyny.)

Marc Andrew Hearron, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights and Coeytaux’s attorney, says Mitchell’s strategy is primarily to stoke fear. After all, the anti-abortion attorney has filed multiple suits against different providers.

“He’s very good at filing complaints and stoking fear … but at the end of the day, he hasn’t won any of these cases yet. Zero.”

In the States

The RISE Collective in Colorado is one of a few providers in the nation that offers all-trimester abortion care. Formed by former employees of the shuttered Boulder Abortion Clinic, the group opened three months ago—and has faced anti-abortion harassment ever since.

KGNU reports that on Tuesday, about 40 protesters from groups like the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs (AAPLOG) protested outside RISE. AAPLOG board member Catherine Wheeler told the outlet that they were “raising awareness.”

“We are hoping that the lease holder of the space will become aware of the harms that are happening in his facility and that facilities like this will close.”

If Wheeler is so concerned about harms, perhaps she should look to her own organization: AAPLOG encourages doctors to forgo providing abortions even when a patient’s life is in danger. (They claim an abortion is never medically necessary.)

RISE has faced widespread harassment from conservative media for months now—at a time when anti-abortion violence is sharply on the rise, and the Trump administration is enabling it. If you can, donate to RISE here.

Meanwhile, an update on a Michigan bill we’ve been following for weeks now—legislation which would force doctors to ask abortion patients invasive questions, then report their answers to the state. The House Health Policy Committee voted along party lines today to advance the bill to the full chamber. This is the latest example of anti-abortion politicians refusing to take “no” for an answer: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed the bill removing these same exact reporting requirements back in 2023.

As Jessica has previously noted, these bills serve a key purpose, even if they aren’t signed into law:

Anti-abortion legislators are hoping to 1) scare women out of getting care by making it clear the state is tracking their abortions, and 2) set a shitty precedent for what kinds of questions are deemed reasonable to ask patients. The Michigan legislation, for example, would require doctors to ask women why they’re ending their pregnancies.

This is why abortion reporting legislation is spreading across the country, including Indiana and Ohio.

Over in Maryland, a state that protects abortion rights, abortion access is still under threat: The Abortion Fund of Maryland reports facing increasingly high demand for abortions—and that this demand will only skyrocket as Republicans allow Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire due to their bogus, extremist demands on abortion. The fund tells WYPR that they already help pay for 2,500 visits to reproductive health clinics annually. Co-executive director Lynn McCann-Yeh says:

”We are still seeing an increase in inbound call volume of around 40% more calls year over year. But at the same time, the number of people that we’re able to support on an annual basis has actually stayed pretty flat… because, though demand is increasing, we just don’t have the resources to keep up.”

With the Trump administration set to discontinue the ACA tax credits this January, Maryland premiums on public insurance plans will increase by an average of 13.4%. You can learn more about how premiums in your state will be affected by anti-abortion lawmakers holding health care hostage here.

On a related note: Earlier today, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray posted a video about the Republican strategy—which basically amounts to a backdoor abortion ban. Watch here.

Policing Pregnancy

Brittany Watts, the Ohio woman who faced a felony charge for her miscarriage in 2023, filed a lawsuit earlier this year against local police and the hospital that turned her in. In response, the defendants have claimed they have immunity—and were simply following laws that require those who uncover a deceased body to report it to police.

In response, Watts’ team rightfully raised an eyebrow at the defendants’ classification of miscarriage remains as a “deceased body.” They also pointed out—even if you accept the flawed premise—that the law allows “deceased bodies” to be reported to health personnel rather than police. Which is precisely what Watts did—only to be turned in.

We’ll continue to follow the landmark case, which marks one of the first times a woman criminalized for her pregnancy outcome is seeking to hold local authorities, nurses, and the hospital accountable.

In the two years after Dobbs, hundreds of people were arrested over their pregnancy outcomes. Watts’ lawsuit could go a long way toward discouraging future pregnancy-related criminalization.