Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said Wednesday that concerns about “a lot of harms that women and often young girls are experiencing” when they access the abortion pill mifepristone through the mail is among the reasons why the state has asked to intervene in a federal lawsuit seeking to restrict availability of that abortion medication.
Along with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxon, Uthmeier filed a petition in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas last month requesting to intervene in a case challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) regulation of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions.
It’s a case that the attorneys general of Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho filed in Texas last year after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a group of anti-abortion physician groups lacked legal standing to bring a suit.
Mifepristone, used alongside misoprostol to terminate pregnancies, was approved as safe and effective by the FDA in 2000, initially for up to seven weeks of pregnancy. In 2016, the FDA extended the approval of mifepristone to 10 weeks. In 2023, those medications accounted for 63% of U.S. abortions.
“Often times these medications are sent into the state from out of state and can get into the hands of minors,” Uthmeier said during Tampa at a news conference when asked by a Phoenix reporter about the state’s involvement in the case.
“Now we’ve got serious legal concerns about Florida’s parental consent laws, heartbeat protection laws, you name it. So, obviously, people can read the complaint and see all of our arguments but at the end of the day, we believe that this is dangerous.”
Florida now bans most abortions up to six weeks of pregnancy, before many women are aware they are pregnant. The state also bans accessing an abortion through telehealth.
Yet, as the Phoenix reported last month, a study conducted by #WeCount, a Society of Family Planning project, showed that 13,380 abortions in Florida were provided to pregnant patients under shield laws in 2024. Shield laws are legal protections put in place by some states to reduce legal risk for clinicians who offer abortion to states where it is prohibited or severely restricted.
Florida Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando), who served as senior director for Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida for six years, blasted Uthmeier’s comments.
‘Junk science’“The AG is lying and constantly spreads misinformation and junk science for his political agenda,” she told the Phoenix in an email message.
“This is just another example of extreme anti-reproductive healthcare politicians inserting themselves between women and their doctors. Medication abortion is incredibly safe, and it’s important to note that more than 57% of Floridians — based in the support for Amendment 4 in 2024 — want politicians like Uthmeier to stop their anti-reproductive healthcare agenda. He should be focused on going after insurance companies that deny access to care, not trying to take away access to care.”
As Eskamani noted, more than 57% of Floridians supported a proposed constitutional amendment last year that would have repealed the state’s six-week abortion ban and enshrined abortion rights into the Florida Constitution. Although a majority, the proposal failed to reach the 60% threshold required for passage.
The legal complaint, filed on Aug. 22 as State of Missouri v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, makes several legal arguments as to why the federal court should allow Florida and Texas to join the lawsuit.
One is the allegation that developments regarding two of the three states that filed the original lawsuit may threaten their legal standing in the case. In the case of Idaho, it’s that there could be a ballot referendum restoring abortion rights in 2026. In Missouri, litigation continues regarding a constitutional amendment that legalized abortion to the point of viability but which has never gone into effect.
The filing cites the #WeCount study, listing specifically that 10,290 telehealth abortions were performed in Florida between May 2024 and December 2024.
The state also lists a report published earlier this year alleging that more than 10% of women who took abortion drugs suffered a ‘serious adverse event.’ That study, published by Ethics & Public Policy Center, reported that the incidence of sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or “other serious adverse events” associated with mifepristone abortion is 11%.
However, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and women’s health experts have said that the findings in that study are based on faulty methodology and do not replace years of studies showing that the medication is safe when used as prescribed.
“Across the country, people have learned about abortion pills by mail from resources like PlanCPills.org and have safely managed an abortion from home, without complications,” said Cheyenne Drews, reproductive freedom program director with Progress Florida.
“The study referenced by the Ethics and Public Policy Center is junk science: it is not peer-reviewed, and is based on purchased data from a health insurance claims database, where they used any reason a person visited an ER within 45 days of taking mifepristone and classified it as an ‘adverse effect.’
Shield lawsThe filing also alleges that legal developments in Texas and Louisiana have illustrated the difficulty of enforcing abortion regulations against “abortionists in ‘shield law’ jurisdictions.”
Maggie Carpenter, a physician who practices abortion care via telemedicine, was the first to be criminally charged for prescribing over state lines, and is being protected by New York’s shield law against a lawsuit from Texas’ attorney general and criminal prosecution from Louisiana.
Uthmeier was one of 16 Republican attorneys general who signed a letter on July 29 calling on Congress to consider pre-empting abortion shield laws.
In May, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that he had directed the Food and Drug Administration to review its regulations for mifepristone.
Cheyenne Drews with Progress Florida says the state’s intervention in the Texas case is another example of “anti-reproductive freedom politicians inserting themselves in the personal medical decisions between patients and their doctors.”
“If these extremists cared about health, they’d investigate the taxpayer-funded unregulated pregnancy centers, currently operating with no medical or safety standards, and no training on how to diagnose or treat ectopic pregnancies. Instead, they’re focused on adding more barriers to our essential health care,” she said.
Pregnancy centers offer many of the same services as other women’s health centers, including pregnancy testing and care, but often are backed by religious organizations and try to discourage patients from undergoing abortions.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
