Rosalie Markezich’s boyfriend used her personal information to order abortion pills from California and have them delivered through the U.S. mail. He then pressured and coerced her into taking the drugs, killing her unborn child.
Recently, the Trump administration told a federal court that what happened to her doesn’t constitute “immediate harm.”
Trump’s Department of Justice made this argument while seeking to halt a lawsuit brought by the state of Louisiana and by Markezich herself, claiming that mail-ordered abortion drugs don’t harm states’ ability to protect the unborn. For a woman who was coerced into an unwanted abortion and lost her child, and for a state whose laws explicitly prohibit such drugs, the message from Washington couldn’t be clearer: You’re on your own.
This is not what we were promised. When the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision returned abortion policy to the states, pro-life Americans celebrated a hard-won victory. States could finally protect unborn children and their mothers according to their citizens’ will. But that promise is being gutted — not only by abortion activists in blue states, but by the federal government’s refusal to enforce common-sense safeguards on chemical abortion drugs.
The Biden administration removed the longstanding requirement for in-person doctor visits before receiving mifepristone and opened the floodgates to mail-order abortion. Trump has yet to restore those safeguards, which his own first administration enforced. The result? Chemical abortions now account for 63 percent of all abortions nationwide, and that number is climbing. Pro-life state laws are being circumvented with every package that arrives in the mail.
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The consequences extend far beyond politics. Without an in-person medical visit, women have no way of knowing whether they have an ectopic pregnancy — a potentially fatal condition that chemical abortion drugs cannot treat and may even mask until it’s too late. They have no way of confirming gestational age. And as Rosalie’s case makes horrifyingly clear, they have no protection against abusive partners, who can now acquire these drugs with a few clicks and no oversight.
Rosalie’s story is not an isolated incident. Many coerced chemical abortions have been documented recently, often enabled by the ease of mail-order access and the absence of medical oversight. Moreover, real-world insurance claims data show the serious adverse event rate for mifepristone is 22 times higher than the FDA officially admits. Women are hemorrhaging, developing sepsis, and suffering infections — often alone, often without any medical professional aware that they took the drugs.
Some state leaders are fighting back. Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman has opened an investigation after a New York-based organization began advertising chemical abortion drugs at gas stations across Kentucky and West Virginia, in direct violation of those states’ laws. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has filed multiple lawsuits challenging the flow of illegal abortion drugs into her state. Twenty-two state attorneys general have formally denounced the FDA’s abandonment of mifepristone safeguards as “illegal and dangerous.”
Yet these state leaders are forced to play an exhausting game of legal whack-a-mole while the federal government — which could resolve this immediately — instead throws up roadblocks.
The FDA is “slow-walking” its long-awaited study of mifepristone. The Justice Department is actively blocking states from enforcing their own laws in court. The administration that should be empowering pro-life states is instead arguing that a woman being coerced and losing her child doesn’t rise to the level of “immediate harm.”
The solution is simple: Restore the in-person dispensing requirement. Reinstate the safeguards that existed during Trump’s first term. Stop treating state sovereignty as an obstacle to be overcome rather than a constitutional principle to be defended.
More than two years ago, nearly half the nation’s attorneys general asked the FDA for exactly this. They are still waiting. Markezich is still waiting. The women who will be harmed tomorrow and next week and next month by a broken federal policy are waiting.
The path forward is clear: Restore the safeguards. Then we’ll know whose side this administration is really on.
