Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill is escalating the interstate battle over abortion pills, launching two lawsuits aimed at stopping abortion drugs from being shipped into states where their distribution is prohibited.

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Joined by the attorneys general of Alabama and Arkansas, Murrill is challenging laws in New York, California, and Massachusetts that protect abortion providers from investigations and prosecutions originating in other states. A separate lawsuit targets more than 30 people and organizations allegedly involved in distributing abortion pills.

From Fox News:

Murrill, along with Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, sued New York, California and Massachusetts at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, alleging their shield laws block cooperation with investigations into abortion-pill providers. The attorneys general also filed a separate lawsuit in Louisiana against more than 30 people and organizations accused of advertising, prescribing, dispensing or shipping abortion pills into their states.

“This is drug dealing and it’s illegal,” Murrill told Fox News Digital. “And we’re going to continue to do everything that we can to enforce the laws in our states.”

The two lawsuits, filed Wednesday, are the latest move in a widening state-by-state fight over abortion. That conflict has grown since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which struck down Roe v. Wade and gave elected officials the power to set abortion policy in their states.

At the center of the Supreme Court case are so-called “shield laws” designed to protect abortion providers operating in states where abortion is legal. Murrill argues that these laws have prevented Louisiana from enforcing its own laws against out-of-state physicians accused of sending abortion drugs into the state. Louisiana has already indicted New York physician Margaret Carpenter and California physician Remy Coeytaux, but Govs. Kathy Hochul and Gavin Newsom have refused Louisiana’s requests to extradite them.

The dispute has produced particularly sharp exchanges between the state officials. Hochul has pledged to keep New York a “safe haven for reproductive rights,” while Newsom said California would not assist states seeking to punish physicians for providing abortion access that is legal in California. When Murrill vowed to sue, Newsom responded with an expletive and declared that California would “never help you criminalize healthcare.” Murrill has vowed to use every available tool to challenge those protections.

The second lawsuit takes aim at what Murrill calls the abortion “pill pipeline.” According to the complaint, providers allegedly use online questionnaires before mailing abortion drugs into states where their distribution is prohibited. Murrill said Louisiana investigators conducted controlled purchases and obtained pills in small packages, sometimes in quantities she said exceeded what would normally be prescribed. “There’s no supervision, there’s no healthcare, there’s no communication whatsoever,” she said. “It’s all done online.”

Murrill also pointed to cases in which Louisiana authorities say abortion drugs were obtained by someone other than the pregnant woman. In one case described by the attorney general, a father allegedly put abortion medication into a smoothie and forced his pregnant teenage daughter to drink it. Murrill said the girl ultimately delivered the baby at 23 weeks and that the child remained in the NICU “fighting for its life.”

The legal battle illustrates how abortion policy continues to divide states four years after Dobbs. Pro-life states are seeking to enforce their abortion laws even when pills originate elsewhere, while states such as New York and California are actively protecting providers from those enforcement efforts. As these cases move through the courts, let’s pray for the protection of unborn children and their mothers, for wisdom among judges and government officials, and that efforts to circumvent state pro-life laws through the mail would be stopped.

Share your prayers for the protection of unborn life in the comments.

(Excerpt from Fox News. Photo Credit: Africa images via Canva Business)