The Supreme Court was asked to intervene after a lower court blocked the dispensing of popular abortion pills by mail.
Abortion pills are under RFK Jr.’s watch
USA TODAY wellness reporter Alyssa Goldberg covers why the abortion drug mifepristone will be reviewed by the FDA.
WASHINGTON – Two years after the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the widely used abortion drug mifepristone, justices will have to decide again whether access should be restricted.
In an emergency motion on May 2, Mifepristone maker Danko Laboratories asked the court to immediately halt a lower court ruling restricting access.
conservative 5th On May 1, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily reinstated a requirement that doctors prescribe drugs only after an in-person consultation. The three-judge panel took the action in response to Louisiana’s challenge to the Biden administration’s repeal of that requirement.
“Almost 1,000 illegal abortions” every month
Louisiana argues that allowing the drug to be dispensed by mail ignores the threat of complications from mifepristone, such as sepsis and bleeding. The state also argues that mail delivery of drugs allows women to circumvent the abortion ban.
The appeals court agreed that this lax rule “facilitates nearly 1,000 illegal abortions in Louisiana every month.”
Several Republican-led states, including states that largely ban abortions, are trying to make it harder for women to access mifepristone, a pill used in nearly two-thirds of abortions nationwide.
The Trump administration’s FDA is currently reviewing the drug’s safety. Abortion rights groups called the review a sham and insisted the science behind the agency’s previous decisions was sound.
“This is not a science issue,” Nancy Northup, director of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “It’s about making abortion as difficult, expensive and unaffordable as possible.”
In January, the administration asked a judge to suspend Louisiana’s challenge until the FDA’s review is complete.
A federal judge agreed. But the appeals court blocked that ruling, saying the in-person dispensing requirement should be reinstated while Louisiana appeals the judge’s decision.
In 2023, the Supreme Court suspended the same appeals court ruling that would have similarly reimposed in-person requirements while a lawsuit brought by anti-abortion doctors was pending.
In 2024, judges dismissed the case, ruling that the doctors had no legitimate basis to challenge the FDA’s decision.
Republican-led states have vowed to continue the fight.
Danko told the Supreme Court in an emergency appeal that the Louisiana case shares the same issues as the challenge by anti-abortion doctors.
“Louisiana’s suit should have been dismissed in its entirety,” the drug company said.
Danko also said the ruling “created immediate confusion and havoc in very sensitive medical decisions,” forcing drug companies, the FDA, patients and pharmacies to second-guess what is allowed and what is not.
“Never before has a federal court summarily blocked the approval of a years-old drug, restricted the distribution system for that drug that manufacturers, health care providers, patients, and pharmacies have relied on for years, or reinstated conditions that FDA determined did not meet the required statutory standards,” the company’s attorneys wrote.
