Louisiana issues arrest warrant for California doctor who allegedly sent abortion pills

Nada Hassanein, Stateline.org on Oct 1, 2025

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Louisiana has issued an arrest warrant for a California doctor for allegedly mailing abortion pills to a Louisiana woman — the latest legal volley in an ongoing fight between states with abortion bans and those that have enacted protections for abortion providers who use telemedicine to send abortion medication over state lines.

The existence of the arrest warrant, first reported by The Associated Press, was revealed in court documents filed earlier this month in a lawsuit that aims to push federal regulators to reinstate in-person dispensing requirements for mifepristone, rather than allowing it to be prescribed via telehealth. Mifepristone is used in combination with another drug, misoprostol, for medication abortions.

The woman, Rosalie Markezich, and Louisiana Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill are seeking to join that lawsuit. Markezich says in court filings that her boyfriend at the time ordered the drugs in October 2023 from Dr. Remy Coeytaux, a California physician, using her email address.

Markezich claims her boyfriend pressured her to take the pills, and that she regrets doing so. She said she intended to throw up the pills, but was unable to. The abortion wouldn’t have happened if telehealth prescriptions were outlawed, she contends.

Murrill posted a statement on X on Monday evening calling it “dangerous, irresponsible, unethical, and illegal to distribute these pills to strangers in violation of the criminal laws of our State, without any relationship whatsoever to the individual who may ultimately be consuming them.”

“I’ll continue to pursue anyone and use any legal means available to us to hold them accountable,” Murrill wrote. “I will enforce and defend the laws of our State, including suing the governors whose shield laws purport to protect these individuals from criminal conduct in Louisiana.”

Coeytaux also is facing legal action in Texas. In July, a Texas man sued him for allegedly mailing his girlfriend abortion medication.

This year, Texas enacted a law that allows individuals to sue out-of-state providers who prescribe abortion medication to Texas residents. Louisiana also this year passed a law allowing abortion patients to sue providers.

Roughly a quarter of abortions nationwide by the end of last year were via telehealth prescriptions, according to the #WeCount report by the Society of Family Planning.

Twenty-two states, including California, have shield law protections related to reproductive health care that protect providers from out-of-state investigations and prosecution, according to the University of California, Los Angeles Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy.

Eight states, including California, have shield law provisions that extend protections to telehealth abortion prescribers who write prescriptions for patients in abortion-ban states, according to reproductive policy research organization Guttmacher.

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