Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey recently filed suit against the FDA and HHS for approving abortion pills to be shipped.
Medication abortion, a regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, is FDA-approved for terminating a pregnancy in the first 10 weeks of gestation. The regimen was approved in 2000, and in 2021 and 2023, the FDA sought to expand access to the drugs by allowing them to be mail-ordered.
Mr. Bailey's lawsuit challenges the FDA's updated drug label in 2016 that led to a "rollback of most of the safety precautions FDA had put in place when it approved mifepristone in 2000"; the agency's approval of a generic mifepristone in 2019; and the mail-order allowance, according to court documents. In a news release, Mr. Bailey called the agency's decisions an "illegal federal overreach."
Idaho and Kansas have joined the suit, which was filed Nov. 3.
Missouri's attorney general is requesting the court include this complaint in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, a legal case seeking to overturn the FDA's approval of mifepristone. The case hopped into the Supreme Court in spring 2023 as access strained, and the Supreme Court has not made its final ruling yet.