U.S. Supreme Court
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court says abortion pill mifepristone will remain available via telehealth and through the mail.
On May 14, the court issued a stay of the May 1 ruling by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that would have banned mifepristone from being mailed. The stay means the drug will be available as the case brought by the state of Louisiana against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration proceeds through lower courts.
Murrill
“It’s shocking that the Supreme Court would block this common-sense return to medically ethical practices and oversight,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said of Thursday’s stay. “DOJ did not defend Big Pharma, which is profiting from the illegal and unethical distribution of abortion pills. We will keep fighting.”
Earlier this week, Justice Samuel Alito signed two orders May 11 extending the stay that was supposed to expire at 5 p.m. EDT Monday to 5 p.m. EDT Thursday.
On May 4, Alito signed an order temporarily allowing women seeking abortions to obtain mifepristone at pharmacies or through the mail without an in-person doctor’s visit.
A week earlier, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously restricted access to the drug by mail. That ruling required mifepristone to only be distributed in person and at clinics. That overruled regulations set by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
Alito
But Alito, as well as Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented to Thursday’s stay. Alito called the order “unreasoned” and “remarkable.”
“What is at stake is the perpetration of a scheme to undermine our decision in Dobbs," Alito wrote, referring to the majority opinion he wrote that overturned Roe v. Wade. He said Dobbs “restored the right of each state to decide how to regulate abortions within its borders.”
Mifepristone is one of the two drugs used in medication abortions, which is the most common form of abortion in the United States.
Louisiana took the matter to court last year hoping to reinstate a requirement for in-person dispensing, arguing mail access circumvented the state’s abortion laws. When the Fifth Circuit Panel granted the state’s request last month, two drug makers – GenBioPro and Danco – took the case to the Supreme Court to pause that order.
“Big abortion drug dealers want an emergency stay so they can continue to profit from killing more babies by mail without any sort of medical oversight or concern for the health of women taking these pills,” Murrill said earlier this week. “The administrative stay is temporary. I am confident that life and the law will prevail in the end.
“We will never stop protecting women and babies in Louisiana.”
