US Supreme Court restores abortion pill access for now

The Supreme Court has ruled that the abortion pill mifepristone can continue to be accessed by mail.

Two manufacturers that make the pill had asked the Supreme Court to intervene after a lower court placed significant restrictions on access to mifepristone as part of an ongoing lawsuit.

Thursday's order from the high court blocks those limitations while litigation plays out. Access to the pill will likely remain until that lawsuit is decided, which could happen next year.

Abortion pills are the most common method of terminating pregnancies in the US - especially in states where abortion is banned.

The Supreme Court's most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dissented.

In 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed doctors to send pills without seeing patients in person, giving women the ability to receive the pills by mail or at a pharmacy through telemedicine.

The state of Louisiana sued the FDA last October in an effort to prevent delivery of mifepristone.

Louisiana argued that nationwide postage of the drug interfered with the state's own abortion ban.

Earlier this month, in response to the lawsuit, an appeals court temporarily reinstated a requirement that abortion pills be obtained in person.

"Every abortion facilitated by FDA's action cancels Louisiana's ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that 'every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person," the appeals court wrote in that order.

Two mifepristone manufacturers then asked the Supreme Court to weigh in while they prepared to bring an emergency case before the court.

The ruling, which is called a stay, issued on Thursday was part of the court's emergency docket and came with no reasoning attached. It will remain in place until the justices decide whether to hear the manufacturers' case.

Thomas wrote in his dissent that since sending mifepristone by mail is illegal in Louisiana, the drug manufacturers are not entitled to block a court order "based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise."

Mifepristone is the first of a two-pill regimen recommended by the FDA to end a pregnancy. It is widely available in states where abortion is legal.

The drugs' availability was expanded in April 2021, when the FDA said it would lift the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone for the duration of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The following year, the US Supreme Court overturned its decades old Roe v Wade decision that gave women the constitutional right to an abortion. The ruling paved the way for individual states to ban the procedure.

In 2023, the FDA decided to permanently allow mifepristone to be sent by mail. And the following year, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected an effort to restrict access to the drug.

But the decision left the door open to other attempts to limit the availability of the drug.

More than 20 US states have banned or restricted abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.