Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Wednesday asking the Department of Justice (DOJ) to change its position in a lawsuit brought by three states challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) deregulation of the abortion pill.
Hawley sent the letter after the DOJ filed a motion Monday to dismiss the case brought by his home state of Missouri, along with Idaho and Kansas. While Trump’s DOJ did not discuss the merits of the case, attorneys contended states lack standing to sue in a Texas court and argued for the case to either be dismissed or transferred to another court.
“Regardless of the merits of the States’ claims, the States cannot proceed in this Court,” the DOJ filing reads.
“The States are free to pursue their claims in a District where venue is proper, but the States’ claims before this Court must be dismissed or transferred pursuant to the venue statute’s mandatory command,” it reads.
Hawley noted in his letter that “while the grounds for dismissal sought are mostly procedural in nature” he is “troubled by the fact that the Justice Department has sided with the Biden administration’s position, especially considering new data showing the harms of chemical abortion for women. I urge you to reconsider.”
Today I’m calling on the Justice Department to reverse their defense of Joe Biden’s abortion policy. DOJ should be supporting Missouri’s case to put safety limits on abortion drugs pic.twitter.com/re1OagDPtQ
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) May 7, 2025
“Missouri, joined by Idaho and Kansas, is seeking to restore safeguards for the chemical abortion drug, mifepristone, that the Biden administration eliminated,” the senator wrote. “The states have argued their interest in protecting their citizens against the adverse health consequences of the drug—a point which was recently underscored by a landmark new study of mifepristone.”
Hawley referenced a study released last week by the Ethics and Public Policy Center which found that 10.93 percent of women who had mifepristone abortions — the first drug used in a two-drug medication abortion regimen — experienced severe complications including sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following the abortion.
Hawley wrote:
That study found that more than 1 in 10 women who use mifepristone experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, an emergency room visit, or another serious adverse event within 45 days. This rate is far greater than the rate reported on the FDA-approved drug label for mifepristone. Despite these severe safety risks, the Biden administration allowed mifepristone to be delivered via mail and without any medical supervision whatsoever. Missouri’s litigation aims to reverse that policy and protect women.”
“The Biden administration’s mail-order abortion policy poses a grave threat to the health and safety of American women. I strongly urge you to reconsider the Justice Department’s defense of this policy in court.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
The original lawsuit dates all the way back to November 2022, when pro-life doctors challenged the FDA for rolling back safety restrictions on mifepristone. The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the case in June 2024, ruling that the doctors lacked standing to sue.
The ruling left open the opportunity for states to sue, and Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas ultimately jumped onto pro-life doctors’ already-dismissed lawsuit to continue waging war against the pill.
The lawsuit specifically goes after the FDA’s 2016 action extending the permissible gestational age of the baby for which a girl or woman may take abortion drugs from seven weeks gestation to ten weeks gestation and its 2021 rule change allowing abortionists to send mifepristone through the mail, among other changes.
In a medication abortion, mifepristone — also called by the brand name Mifeprex, created by Danco Laboratories — blocks the action of progesterone, which the mother’s body produces to nourish the pregnancy. When progesterone is blocked, the lining of the mother’s uterus deteriorates, and blood and nourishment are cut off to the developing baby, who then dies inside the mother’s womb. The drug misoprostol (also called Cytotec) then causes contractions and bleeding to expel the baby from the mother’s uterus.
In 2023, medication abortions accounted for 63 percent of all abortions within the formal U.S. healthcare system, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute — meaning an estimated 642,700 unborn babies died in medication abortions. The percentage was up from an estimated 53 percent in 2020 and 39 percent in 2017. The report did not account for abortion pills obtained through underground national and international networks, including those that send pills to women in states with abortion restrictions.
The case is Missouri v. FDA, No. 2:22-cv-223 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton
