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 – The Supreme Court on May 4 reinstated mail-order access for the widely used abortion drug mifepristone, in a tentative decision that gives the justices time to consider the issue.
The court intervened after the Food and Drug Administration was ordered on May 1 to reinstate a requirement that doctors prescribe drugs only after an in-person examination. It was the first time that access to mifepristone had been significantly restricted in the years-long legal battle over mifepristone, which was first approved in 2000.
At the drug company’s request, Justice Samuel Alito put the lower court’s restrictive ruling on hold until May 11 while the en banc court decides what the rules for mifepristone should be as Louisiana challenges expanded access.
“While this is a positive development in the short term, no one can rest assured when access to safe and effective drugs to treat abortion and miscarriage remains at risk,” Julia Kay, senior staff attorney at the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement. “The Supreme Court must end this baseless attack on our reproductive freedom once and for all.”
State officials argue that allowing the drug to be mailed ignores the threat of complications from mifepristone, such as sepsis and bleeding. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill also said women could circumvent the abortion ban by mailing the drugs.
In the May 1st ruling, conservativesth The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Louisiana likely would prevail on the challenge and blocked mail-order access for now.
Danko Laboratories, which makes Mifeprex, the brand-name version of mifepristone, said the decision caused “instant confusion and upheaval in critical medical decisions.”
Danko also told the Supreme Court that Louisiana’s complaint should be dismissed for the same reasons the justices rejected a similar lawsuit brought by anti-abortion doctors in 2024.
In that case, the court said the doctors could not sue because they had not shown they were sufficiently harmed by the FDA’s loosening of mifepristone regulations in 2023.
Louisiana argues that making mifepristone more readily available to women in the state would undermine the state’s ability to enforce anti-abortion laws. State officials also said Louisiana’s Medicaid program had to pay $92,000 for emergency treatment for two women who developed complications after taking mifepristone.
Danko said the Supreme Court rejected similar arguments for downstream economic harm in rejecting anti-abortion doctors’ lawsuits.
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.
But GenBiopro, which makes the generic Mifeprex drug, told the Supreme Court on appeal that “Louisiana is the only state seeking such drastic preliminary relief.”
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.
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.
