BATON ROUGE — The state of Louisiana has sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, asking that it rescind a 2023 rule that allows "bad actors" to either spike women's drinks with abortion-causing drugs or force them to take abortifacients against their will.

In a lawsuit filed Monday in Lafayette, the state said the FDA wrongly allowed a COVID-era rule that let mifepristone be dispensed without an in-person visit continue once the pandemic emergency was over. Because Louisiana has outlawed abortion, the practice should be stopped, the state claims.

Attorney General Liz Murrill said the FDA, seeking to undermine the Dobbs decision that voided Roe vs. Wade, "facilitat(ed) the mailing of mifepristone into every pro-life state." She said hundreds of unlawful abortions occur each month in Louisiana.

Last year, a similar case challenging the distribution of the drugs reached the U.S. Supreme Court but was rejected because those who sued didn't have standing. To solve that, Murrill said, she has teamed up with a woman who says her boyfriend forced her to take the drug after receiving it by mail from a California doctor.

"Louisiana has incontrovertible evidence that, because of the 2023 (order), doctors and others are ... sending streams of mifepristone into Louisiana for the express purpose of causing thousands of abortions in Louisiana each year," the lawsuit says. 

Rosalie Markezich, according to the lawsuit, took mifepristone obtained by her boyfriend "under immense pressure and fearing for her safety." Without the FDA relaxing "blind" dispensing, Markezich would have given birth, Murrill said.

Last week, The Associated Press reported that Louisiana had sought an arrest warrant for a California doctor whom Murrill said supplied the abortifacient to Markezich's boyfriend.

A separate but similar Louisiana criminal case was opened against a New York doctor and a West Baton Rouge mother this year. That case involved a Port Allen woman who allegedly forced her daughter to take drugs supplied by a New York doctor.