LAFAYETTE — A federal judge heard arguments Tuesday on whether Louisiana has the right to keep out-of-state doctors from sending abortion-causing drugs to the state's residents without requiring an in-person consultation.

Louisiana moved to restrict abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022 said states could make their own decisions over abortion policy — overturning a 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.

A year after the Dobbs decision, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a rule saying abortion-causing drugs could be dispensed through telehealth programs and mailed to patients. Louisiana sued to challenge the law last year, and similar challenges are underway in Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri and Texas.

"Multiple federal judges have already acknowledged that the rule itself was arbitrary and capricious and there is no actual justification for it," Louisiana Attorney General Liz Baker said after Tuesday's hearing.

Louisiana's lawsuit seeks to have the FDA rescind the rule. The FDA has asked the judge to pause proceedings to allow it time to conduct a new review of mifepristone, though previous studies have said it is safe to end early-term pregnancies.

"Deferring judicial review ... will not prejudice plaintiffs," according to the FDA's lawyers. "Louisiana waited nearly three years to challenge. ... Louisiana suffers no sovereign injury because it remains free to make and enforce its pro-life policies after Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Org."

But Murrill said the FDA had no good reason to relax its regulations.

"Wanting to nullify and find a workaround to the Supreme Court precedent in Dobbs is not a justification for this rule," she said outside court. "This is a drug with a black box warning on it. It causes hemorrhaging, it can cause sepsis, it can cause women to die."

In friends of the court briefs, many raised arguments related to the role domestic violence plays in access to the drug: Some say abusers have forced women to take abortion-causing drugs, but others say women should have an option to obtain them from an out-of-state physician without a doctor's visit.

Last year, a West Baton Rouge Parish grand jury indicted a New York doctor, saying she had mailed an abortion-inducing drug that was later given to a minor. 

Last month, Murrill's office said a California doctor had sent pills to a St. Tammany Parish woman and that her boyfriend forced her to take them.