Supreme Court temporarily restores ability to receive abortion drug mifepristone by mail

(CNN) — The Supreme Court temporarily restored telehealth and mail access to the abortion pill mifepristone on Monday, responding to an emergency appeal that warned of potential chaos for patients who had appointments to access the drug.

The “administrative stay” is far from a final decision but rather maintains the status quo for a few days while the court reviews emergency appeals filed Saturday by the drug’s manufacturer and the maker of a generic version. The order puts on hold a decision from the conservative 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals that reinstated a nationwide requirement that the medication be obtained in person, undermining access to the method of abortion that has grown more widespread since the court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Justice Samuel Alito’s order staying the 5th Circuit ruling lasts through May 11, and Alito requested a response in the cases by Thursday.

Danco Laboratories, the maker of mifepristone, told the Supreme Court in its appeal that the 5th Circuit order “injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions.” GenBioPro, which makes a generic version of the drug, said in its own appeal that the lower court’s decision risked “abruptly cutting off access for patients nationwide.”

The fast-track case puts the drug and the issue of abortion back on the high court’s docket less than two years after the justices rejected a similar challenge – a decision that allowed the drug to remain widely available. Alito handles emergency appeals rising from the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, women have been able to obtain mifepristone – one of the two drugs in the medication abortion regimen – through telehealth appointments. The Biden administration finalized rules that ended the requirement that the pills be obtained through an in-person doctor’s visit in 2023, a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

As conservative states have responded to the Supreme Court’s decision by banning or severely limiting access to clinic abortions, medication abortions have become more common. Medication abortions accounted for more than 60% of abortions in the US in 2023, according to Guttmacher Institute research.

A CNN analysis of mifepristone data shows that the drug is overwhelmingly safe and has fewer reported side effects than Viagra or penicillin.

Louisiana sued last year alleging that the Biden-era regulation undermined its own abortion ban. A federal district court in April declined to restrict access to the drug until the Food and Drug Administration completed a safety review of the medication.

The Supreme Court reviewed the issue once before, in 2024, and it unanimously rejected a lawsuit challenging the FDA’s regulation. But the court resolved that dispute by concluding that the doctors and anti-abortion groups that had challenged access to the drug did not have standing to sue. That technical, narrow decision meant that future challenges were almost guaranteed to reach the justices again.