Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill will be a key witness for the GOP during a highly anticipated Senate hearing on mail-order abortion drugs, for which anti-abortion advocates have sought tighter regulations in recent years.
A spokesperson for Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, confirmed for the Washington Examiner that Murrill will be testifying before the committee on Wednesday, highlighting her experience prosecuting cases of coerced abortion in Louisiana using mail-order mifepristone despite nonmedical emergency abortions being illegal in her state.
Anti-abortion advocates have grown increasingly frustrated with the second Trump administration’s handling of abortion on multiple fronts, including mifepristone policy.
Mailing mifepristone across state lines has been a top problem for anti-abortion advocates since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, which allowed states such as Louisiana to establish stiff gestational age limits on abortion procedures.
In 2021, the Food and Drug Administration loosened restrictions on mifepristone by no longer requiring in-person doctors visits to obtain the medication, thereby allowing the drug to be mailed directly to patients.
Much of Murrill’s testimony at Wednesday’s hearing will likely revolve around the issue of so-called shield laws implemented by abortion-rights states after the fall of Roe in order to protect physicians and other healthcare providers from prosecution in states where it is illegal, enabling the sale of abortion pills across state lines.
Last February, a Louisiana grand jury indicted New York physician Margaret Carpenter in a criminal case for prescribing abortion pills to a Louisiana minor. The minor’s mother ordered mifepristone and misoprostol from Carpenter and coerced her daughter into an abortion.
Murrill told the Washington Examiner in an exclusive interview about the case last year that the physician’s decision to prescribe mifepristone in a state where it is illegal was “the same as if she had sold cocaine.”
Murrill and New York Attorney General Letitia James have gotten into heated exchanges on X about the case, as James and Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) have said they will not comply with extradition orders for Carpenter.
Anti-abortion advocates have called on the Trump administration to use the Comstock Act of 1873, an archaic law that regulates the mailing of obscene materials, to block the mailing of mifepristone across state lines.
The hearing will also likely emphasize the concerns of anti-abortion advocates that contend mifepristone is more dangerous than previously thought because of the FDA’s 2016 decision to no longer require that doctors report nonfatal adverse complications.
Two studies last year from anti-abortion groups using insurance claims data found that 11% of patients who were prescribed mifepristone experienced severe complications within 45 days of medication abortion, including sepsis and hemorrhaging.
That’s roughly 22 times higher than the 0.5% complication rate reported by the FDA and listed on the medication’s packaging.
Cassidy, a physician by training, said in a statement announcing the high-profile hearing that his goal is “to uphold a culture of life and prioritize women‘s safety over political ideology.”
“The medical evidence is clear: chemical abortion drugs not only kill innocent babies, but also put women in serious danger,” Cassidy said.
Senate Republicans have been ramping up pressure on the FDA to conduct its own safety review of mifepristone and to reinstitute in-person screening requirements, which both FDA chief Dr. Marty Makary and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. agreed to do during their Senate confirmation hearings.
Despite the long-awaited safety review of mifepristone, the FDA in October approved a new generic version of mifepristone. FDA officials said they are statutorily obligated to approve generic drugs if they prove to have the same chemical composition as the brand-name drug, but anti-abortion advocates say the new generic will cause a spike in mail-order abortions, including in states where it is illegal.
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All but two GOP senators this fall signed onto a letter authored by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) urging the Department of Health and Human Services to “take decisive action” to review the safety of mifepristone and reevaluate the approval of the new generic pill.
Other witnesses at the HELP hearing Wednesday include Monique Chireau Wubbenhorst, a senior fellow at the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame, and Nisha Verma, a fellow at the abortion-rights advocacy group Physicians for Reproductive Health.