The US supreme court has temporarily reinstated nationwide access to mifepristone, blocking a ruling that threatened to upend accessibility of an abortion pill involved in nearly two-thirds of pregnancy terminations across the country.
On Monday, justice Samuel Alito signed an order pausing a fifth US circuit court of appeals ruling that had imposed new limits on the drug. That decision, issued on Friday, called on preventing abortion providers from prescribing mifepristone through the mail.
Friday’s restrictions came from a conservative three-judge panel at an appellate courthouse in New Orleans that is widely considered one of the most conservative in the US. The panel’s ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Louisiana’s state government against the Food and Drug Administration, arguing that mail distribution of the medication ignores potential health risks and allows patients to circumvent abortion bans.
Mifepristone is taken alongside misoprostol in a two-drug regimen that decades of research have shown to be safe and effective.
In response to the appeals court ruling, Danco Laboratories – one of the drug’s manufacturers – filed an emergency appeal to the US supreme court on Saturday. The company asked the justices to halt the restrictions, warning that the lower court’s decision “injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions” and would cause “chaos”.
Alito said his order would remain in effect until at least 5pm ET on 11 May. He has given Louisiana until 5pm ET on Thursday to respond to efforts seeking to block the appeals court ruling.
Responding to the temporary pause, Alexis McGill Johnson, the president of abortion rights group Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said: “While mifepristone access returns to where it was on Friday morning, the whiplash and chaos that patients and providers are navigating have already had real consequences for real people’s lives and futures.”
Similarly, Julia Kaye, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said: “While this is a positive short-term development, no one can rest easy when our ability to get this safe, effective medication for abortion and miscarriage care still hangs in the balance.
“The supreme court needs to put an end to this baseless attack on our reproductive freedom, once and for all.”
Monday’s order from Alito and the appellate court decision three days earlier follow the supreme court’s unanimous rejection in 2024 of a challenge to mifepristone access. That was seen as a major victory for reproductive rights advocates after the supreme court in 2022 overturned the federal right to abortion established previously by Roe v Wade.
