Pro-Life States Are Taking Abortion ‘Shield Laws’ to the Supreme Court

When the Supreme Court issued its historic ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in 2022, it confirmed that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. For pro-life advocates and states, this was a monumental step toward protecting innocent life.

The ruling gave the issue of abortion back to the states, meaning that individual Americans, through their elected representatives, have a say. In the years since, however, that promise has been deliberately undercut. States like Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas have enacted strong pro-life laws to protect women and their unborn children. Despite that, abortions continue to increase in those states in large numbers because the Biden FDA eliminated the in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion drug mifepristone in 2023, authorizing mail-order abortions nationwide. Complicit in this scheme are pro-abortion states whose “shield laws” leave pro-life states with little ability to hold the prescribers mailing those drugs accountable.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is fighting on every front. Alongside ADF, she is challenging the FDA’s mail-order decision—without which none of these pro-abortion states or prescribers could carry out their current operations—in court. And joined by Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin and Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, she has asked the Supreme Court to dismantle the laws immunizing individual actors from liability for their part in the mail-order abortion scheme.

How do these shield laws work?

A shield law is not one statute. It is dozens of small provisions scattered across a state’s legal code, which together are meant to touch every legal or professional problem a prescriber might otherwise face for sending abortion drugs into states that protect life.

New York, Massachusetts, and California exempt abortion-drug prescribers from the states’ usual rule that a prescriber’s name appear on the label. And this is clearly deliberate. New York Governor Kathy Hochul said as much after Louisiana found a New York doctor because her name was on the prescription. The governor pledged that would not happen again.

There’s also the enforcement issue. After a Louisiana grand jury indicted that New York doctor, Gov. Hochul refused to extradite her and issued a “law enforcement notice” telling authorities not to cooperate with certain out-of-state warrants. California Gov. Gavin Newsom likewise refused to extradite a California doctor for whom Louisiana issued an arrest warrant. When he received Attorney General Murrill’s request, Gov. Newsom used gross vulgarity to publicly refuse.

These shield laws also thwart investigations. For example, Louisiana investigators could not get electronic communications records from Google, AT&T, Spruce, or Stripe, because of shield law provisions requiring those companies to certify that the records were for non-abortion purposes. Massachusetts and California shield laws also include “clawback” provisions, which let defendants and other “aggrieved parties” sue anyone who brings litigation targeting their unlawful activity.

But shield laws only protect what the FDA’s 2023 decision made possible. Every major mail-order abortion dispenser in the country now relies on FDA-approved mifepristone because of that decision. That is why ADF, alongside Louisiana, is challenging the FDA’s decision itself in Louisiana v. FDA.

Three lawsuits, one goal

Louisiana has now filed three lawsuits—with ADF involved in one—aimed at the same goal: ending the flow of mail-order abortion drugs into the state.

The first, Louisiana v. FDA, was filed in October 2025 on behalf of Louisiana and Rosalie Markezich, with ADF as co-counsel alongside Attorney General Liz Murrill. It challenges the FDA’s 2023 decision to eliminate the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit heard arguments on Louisiana’s appeal from a denial of preliminary relief in September.

The second, Louisiana v. Nouhavandi, was filed in September 2026 by Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama against 30 individuals and organizations responsible for remotely dispensing abortion drugs into the three states. The third, Louisiana v. New York, goes after the shield laws themselves. Because disputes between states go directly to the Supreme Court, the three states asked for permission to file their complaint against New York, Massachusetts, and California directly in the High Court. If the Court hears the case, the states want a ruling that the shield laws are unlawful and an order barring officials in those states from enforcing them.

Together, the three suits dismantle the unlawful scheme devised by the FDA to circumvent the Dobbs decision. Two ask courts to hold accountable those who mail abortion drugs into pro-life states and to strip their claimed authority to do so without consequence. Louisiana v. FDA goes to the source itself: the federal decision that opened the door to mail-order abortion.

Shield laws help enable coercion and abuse

Rosalie Markezich was happy when she learned she was pregnant in October 2023. Her then-boyfriend was not. He ordered abortion drugs online from a California doctor Rosalie had never spoken to and had them delivered to her home in Louisiana. Alone with him in a car and terrified of his escalating behavior, Rosalie took the drugs in his sight, hoping to throw them up when she could get away. She couldn’t, and she lost her child.

Rosalie had no opportunity to ask for help. With the in-person dispensing requirement gone thanks to the FDA, her prescriber never had to see or speak to her. The barrier for acquiring these high-risk drugs was little more than shipping information, $150, and a short questionnaire that her then-boyfriend filled out without Rosalie’s consent.

The reckless decision-making of the FDA took away Rosalie’s chance to tell a doctor that she wanted to keep her baby. And when Louisiana tried to pursue accountability and issued an arrest warrant for the California doctor who had sent drugs, Gov. Gavin Newsom refused to extradite him, citing the state’s shield law.

The ease with which these drugs can be acquired means Rosalie is not alone. One New York doctor sent abortion drugs to a Louisiana teenager whose mother coerced her to take them. Paramedics found the girl bleeding on a bathroom floor, crying uncontrollably, and she ended up in the hospital. Louisiana also reports about a woman who nearly died in an operating room after hemorrhaging from drugs sold by an online provider, others who landed in emergency rooms, and physicians who say they treat women with complications from abortion drugs in the pro-life state daily.

Women like Rosalie have been wronged at every turn by the agency that was supposed to protect them. The FDA removed a critical safeguard, creating this abortion-by-mail scheme that has already caused so much harm to women, unborn children, and the people who care for them.

Every bad actor must be held accountable

It all started with the FDA’s removal of abortion drug safeguards. That opened the door for the boyfriend who coerced Rosalie and for the prescriber who sent the drugs at his request. Each played a part in what happened to Rosalie, and shield laws are part of the scheme that allows these events to go unchecked. ADF stands with Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama to seek justice for these women and their children.