Women in Georgia have had to navigate the state’s six week abortion ban for the past few years, but lawyers and advocates say a lawsuit coming out of another Southern state could further restrict access.
On Sept. 9 oral arguments began for Louisiana v. the U.S Food and Drug Administration, a suit over telehealth and mail delivery access to the abortion pill mifepristone.
In 2020, the FDA began allowing mifepristone to be prescribed through telehealth and delivered to patients in the mail. Previously, the medication was only allowed to be dispensed in-person in a medical facility. In 2023 the agency made the rule change official.
The case is currently being argued in a federal appeals court. Katie Keith, director of the health policy and law initiative at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, said the case threatens abortion access across the country — even in states where the procedure is legal.
For Black Georgians, this access is significant as 68% of the residents who got an abortion in 2022 were Black.
“The Supreme Court post-Dobbs said, ‘We’re going to leave the issue of abortion access up to the states’ and we have seen states impose all kinds of barriers and bans on care,” Keith said. “What makes this case extra unique is that Louisiana, by itself, one state, is basically trying to reshape national policy and impose restrictions that it wants on other states.”
Louisiana argues in the lawsuit that the ability for people to access mifepristone via telehealth infringes on the state’s right to prohibit abortion within its borders, as people are able to access the medication with the help of out-of-state providers.
Although the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of Louisiana earlier this year, on May 1, the Supreme Court sent the suit back to the Fifth Circuit after two manufacturers of mifepristone appealed. In the meantime, the Supreme Court ruled that telehealth access will remain in place until the case works through the lower courts.
In the aftermath of Georgia enforcing a six-week abortion ban in 2022, telehealth has increasingly played a significant role in how residents are accessing abortion. According to KFF, in June 2025 around 46% of abortions were accessed through telehealth.
Kwajelyn Jackson, executive director of the Feminist Center for Reproductive Liberation in Atlanta, said Georgia residents accessing abortion through telehealth services are likely utilizing services from out-of-state providers because in order for Georgia providers to administer abortion medication, the law requires an ultrasound to confirm the presence or absence of cardiac activity in a fetus.
Jackson said the states that Georgians are going to for telehealth services are also likely states with shield laws that aim to give legal protection to patients who are accessing abortion care.
According to data from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization, the number of Georgia residents traveling outside of the state to access abortion care decreased from 13,880 in 2023 to 9,980 in 2025. Advocates say this change is a result of telehealth access and states enacting shield laws.
“Shield laws have become a cornerstone of the U.S. abortion access landscape,” Kimya Forouzan, Guttmacher principal state policy advisor, said in a press release. “By protecting interstate telehealth care, these policies help ensure that many abortion seekers, regardless of their address, can obtain the care they need and deserve. In an increasingly fragmented environment, strong protections for providers, patients and support networks are more important than ever.”
Jackson said the majority of the patients seen at the Feminist Center are Black, and any form of further limiting access to abortion care could be dire as the state is battling a high Black maternal mortality rate.
“So if these attempts to, again, erode reproductive freedom, to take away people’s options, to ignore their needs and wants, to make their healthcare harder to access, we will continue to see worsening outcomes for Black people,” Jackson said. “Especially Black people who can get pregnant. We have not yet seen real interventions be put into place to reduce the maternal mortality rates that continue to climb in the state of Georgia. Causing people to have pregnancies that they do not want or that may not be safe or healthy for them will inevitably only exacerbate those outcomes.”
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