The Department of Justice asked on Friday to pause or dismiss Missouri's lawsuit seeking to reinstate FDA safety regulations for mifepristone, the chemical abortion drug now flowing through the U.S. mail into states that have banned or restricted abortion.

The Daily Caller reported that Missouri, joined by Kansas and Idaho, had sued to restore the in-person dispensing requirement the FDA gutted in recent years. The DOJ told the court those states "suffer no sovereign injury because they remain free to make and enforce their pro-life policies after Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Org."

The same day, the DOJ asked to pause Louisiana's separate case until the FDA finishes its own mifepristone safety review, a review with no announced completion date.

Days after announcing that review, the FDA quietly approved a new version of the generic abortion pill.

And the 2022 Office of Legal Counsel memo that declared the Comstock Act does not prohibit mailing abortion drugs? Still on the books. The DOJ has not issued a new memo, has not rescinded the old one, and declined to comment on whether it has any plans to reevaluate.

The Comstock problem the DOJ won't touch

The Comstock Act, an 1873 federal law, prohibits mailing anything "designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion."

When Congress amended it in 1996, it left that provision intact. The Biden administration's OLC memo carved out an exception, reasoning that the law does not apply where "the sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully." That interpretation effectively neutralized the statute for mail-order abortion providers.

A former DOJ attorney, speaking to the Daily Caller News Foundation, put it bluntly:

"It's curious that they would let a Biden-era legal opinion stand when the administration has been reversing Biden-era positions like a hot knife through butter."

The same attorney argued that Comstock enforcement is the only mechanism that can actually protect pro-life states from having their laws circumvented:

"Abortionists and Planned Parenthood have found an easy work around through internet and mail order chemical abortion pills crossing state lines. It's the duty of the federal government to interdict those illegal shipments because they are the only ones with the authority over interstate mail."

That's the crux. After Dobbs returned abortion policy to the states, the promise was that states could chart their own course. But if abortion drugs arrive by mail from providers shielded by other states' laws, that promise is hollow.

The numbers show it's already happening

This is not a theoretical concern. A study of data from Aid Access, one of five providers flagged in a 2025 investigation, found that 84% of the pill packages it supplied from July 2023 to September 2024 were sent to states with near-total or telemedicine bans on abortion. Aid Access promises delivery in one to five days.

The study's own language is telling:

"Despite the wave of state-level abortion bans following the overturn of Roe v Wade, recent data suggest that abortion rates have remained steady or even increased."

The researchers attributed this in part to "the rise of online asynchronous telemedicine abortion services," particularly those "operating under shield laws, which allow US licensed clinicians to provide abortion medications to patients in ban states with protection from legal liability."

So pro-life states pass restrictions. Providers in permissive states mail pills across state lines. Abortion rates don't drop. And the federal government, which holds the only authority over interstate mail, declines to act. The feedback loop is complete.

Pro-life leaders aren't buying the DOJ's framing

The DOJ spokesperson offered reassurances, telling the DCNF that the filing simply requested more time for the FDA to complete its mifepristone review and invoking the Supreme Court's unanimous ruling that drug safety evaluation belongs with the FDA, not federal courts. The spokesperson added:

"This Department of Justice remains committed to advancing President Trump's pro-life agenda, including through dismissing criminal prosecutions and civil lawsuits against peaceful pro-life advocates targeted by the previous administration, and using the FACE Act to protect pro-life pregnancy centers."

Those are real accomplishments. The President pardoned pro-lifers charged under the FACE Act during his first week in office. The DOJ has used that same statute to prosecute anti-ICE activists who disrupted a church service in Minnesota. Nobody disputes the administration's willingness to act on behalf of pro-life advocates when they've been targeted.

But the criticism from pro-life organizations isn't about pardons or FACE Act enforcement. It's about the abortion drugs themselves.

SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser released a statement the same Friday:

"While Secretary Kennedy is focused on the scourge of Dunkin' coffee and the DOJ has been busy litigating against concerned Republican leaders in ruby-red states, women and girls are under assault and babies are being killed."

Erik Baptist, director of the Center for Life at the Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the plaintiff states, was direct about the legal strategy of delay:

"At some point, the Department of Justice will be forced to answer our claims on the merits and not just relying on its request to pause the case."

To date, the DOJ has not actually defended the Biden-era rules surrounding mifepristone on their merits.

A law designed for exactly this moment

The argument that the Comstock Act is a dusty relic doesn't survive contact with the historical record. Congress amended it in 1996, preserving the prohibition on mailing abortion-inducing materials. That is not a forgotten statute. That is a congressional decision made within the lifetime of most adults reading this article.

Sarah Zagorski, senior director for public relations and communication at Americans United for Life, told the DCNF:

"The federal government is able to enforce the mail-order abortion rules at this moment, they just have not done so."

She added that Congress "lawfully passed the mail-order abortion rules under its commerce and postal powers" and pushed back on the obsolescence narrative: "While some have argued that the Comstock Act is a 19th century law and obsolete, this is incorrect."

Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho agreed in an August 2023 partial dissent that the FDA's decision to allow mailing mifepristone violates the Comstock Act. Florida and Texas have taken the same position in a December lawsuit challenging both the original approval and deregulation of mifepristone, alleging Comstock violations directly.

Ruth B. Merkatz, the former Director of HHS's Office of Women's Health from 1994 to 1996, said the quiet part out loud in a 2019 interview about mifepristone's approval:

"We knew RU-486 [mifepristone] was going to be very important especially in states where surgical abortions are not permitted."

And then:

"And if they overturn Roe v. Wade, it's going to be really important."

The architects of chemical abortion always understood its purpose: to make state-level restrictions unenforceable. The mail was always the delivery mechanism. The Comstock Act was always the obstacle. And right now, nobody is enforcing it.

The gap between promise and enforcement

The frustration among pro-life conservatives is not difficult to understand. The Dobbs decision was supposed to be the beginning of a new era in which democratic majorities in red states could protect unborn life.

Instead, the abortion industry adapted. Shield laws in blue states provide legal cover. Telemedicine providers ship pills in days. And the one federal tool designed to stop it sits unused, protected by a Biden-era legal memo that the current DOJ won't touch.

The DOJ argues this belongs with the FDA. The FDA approves new generic abortion drugs while conducting its review. Red-state attorneys general file lawsuits. The DOJ moves to dismiss or delay them. Pro-life organizations issue statements. The pills keep arriving.

As the former DOJ attorney noted, this is "no ordinary subject matter." The states that fought for decades to reclaim the right to protect unborn life are watching that right dissolve in a mailbox.