In a Thursday emergency order, the Supreme Court kept in place access to mifepristone, the medication at the center of a continuing legal fight between the federal Food and Drug Administration’s prescribing rules and Louisiana’s effort to limit medication abortion. The justices rejected restrictions ordered by lower courts, allowing patients seeking abortions to continue obtaining the drug without an in-person visit to a doctor as the lawsuit proceeds.
The Supreme Court’s order, issued while the case is still being litigated, permits mifepristone to be obtained through pharmacies or delivered through the mail. The court’s action means access is likely to remain uninterrupted “at least until into next year,” according to the AP report, as the case continues through appeals and possible further review by the high court.
The emergency request came from the makers of the drug, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro. They are appealing a decision by a federal appeals court that would require patients to see a doctor in person and would halt delivery of mifepristone through the mail while the litigation plays out. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which first approved mifepristone for abortion in 2000, stopped requiring in-person visits five years ago.
In dissent, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito argued that the companies were not entitled to the court’s intervention. Thomas wrote that the companies are not entitled to an order that would spare them what he described as “lost profits from their criminal enterprise,” while Alito’s dissent focused on the companies’ role in supplying the drug for use in Louisiana despite the state’s abortion ban.
Thomas also invoked the Comstock Act, a 19th-century law that he said has long been unenforced but that bars mailing of certain items advertised or described for producing abortion. He argued that those who mail the pills are in violation of the law, as described in the AP report’s account of his dissent. The majority’s decision, however, kept the ongoing dispute in the courts from immediately disrupting existing access rules.
The litigation stems from a lawsuit filed by Louisiana to roll back the FDA’s rules on how mifepristone can be prescribed. The state argues that the FDA policy undermines Louisiana’s abortion ban, and it also questions the drug’s safety even as FDA scientists have repeatedly found it safe and effective, according to the AP report.
Lower courts had concluded that Louisiana was likely to prevail and had ordered that mail access and telehealth visits be suspended while the case continues. The Supreme Court’s emergency order overrode that pause, preserving the current method of obtaining mifepristone for now.
The case draws attention to how medication abortion is used in the United States. The AP report said the drug is typically used in combination with misoprostol for abortions, and medication abortions accounted for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023, the most recent year for which statistics were available at the time of the reporting.
Abortion-rights advocates said Thursday’s order was a temporary relief. Serra Sippel, executive director of The Brigid Alliance, which helps coordinate travel and other logistics to assist women seeking abortions, said in a statement that she was “relieved that access to mifepristone remains protected for now,” but that the case “should never have been on the table in the first place.”
Anti-abortion advocates criticized the decision while saying it does not end the fight. Gavin Oxley, a spokesperson for Americans United for Life, called the ruling “extremely disappointing” but said it was “not a defeat,” arguing the Supreme Court still has the opportunity to hear the case in full and bring what he characterized as justice to Louisiana.
The dispute is part of a broader series of mifepristone-related cases that have reached the Supreme Court in the years since the court overturned Roe v. Wade. The AP report noted that the high court has previously blocked restrictions in similar disputes, and it referenced an earlier development in which the justices blocked a Fifth Circuit ruling while Alito and Thomas dissented, and another case in 2024 in which the court unanimously dismissed a doctors’ suit for lack of standing.
The Supreme Court is also managing its latest abortion controversy in a political context shaped by battles over FDA review. The AP report said anti-abortion groups have urged faster FDA action that they hope will lead to restrictions on mifepristone, including blocking prescribing via telehealth platforms, while the administration has argued that the review process takes time.
The AP report also said earlier this week FDA Commissioner Marty Makary resigned after months of criticism from Trump’s political allies, including abortion opponents. As the mifepristone case continues, both sides told the AP they expect the issue to remain in play in future proceedings rather than ending with Thursday’s order.
Published sources and quotations in this article come from the Associated Press report by Mark Sherman, and include statements cited in that reporting from Serra Sippel and Gavin Oxley.