Supreme Court allows abortion pill by mail to continue — for now
by Stephen Dinan · The Washington TimesSupreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. issued an order Monday allowing the abortion pill to continue to be available through remote appointments and mail, putting on hold an appeals court decision that found the FDA improperly relaxed safety requirements for the drug.
Justice Alito, a George W. Bush appointee, issued an administrative stay, which blocks a lower court decision for a week while the high court hears additional briefings and considers the case more fully.
He issued the order three days after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling and two days after two pharmaceutical firms rushed to the high court asking the justices to intervene.
The lower court’s ruling upended abortion policy nationwide, returning the issue to the Supreme Court for the second time in two years.
“This is a five-alarm crisis for the pro-life movement and for the GOP,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA Pro-Life America.
At issue is mifepristone, a drug critical to medication abortions. That process allows a pregnancy to be terminated without a surgical visit. The drug has been approved for decades but traditionally required an in-person visit for both the prescription and dispensing.
The FDA suspended the in-person dispensing requirement during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency and, under the Biden administration, made the change permanent in 2023.
Abortion opponents said the move was designed to counter the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade and restored abortion policies to the purview of states, some of which have since banned the procedure.
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Louisiana, which has a near-total abortion ban, sued to shut down mail distribution, arguing it trampled on the state’s prerogatives.
The Trump administration’s FDA, meanwhile, is conducting a safety review of mifepristone, which was initiated at the direction of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The 5th Circuit said Louisiana shouldn’t have to wait for the FDA’s decision.
“The public interest is not served by perpetuating a medical practice whose safety the agency admits was inadequately studied,” 5th Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee, wrote for the court.
He said the FDA’s approval needed to be put on hold nationwide.
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GenBioPro Inc. and Danco Laboratories LLC, the manufacturers, had rushed to the high court to delay the ruling from taking effect.
The case puts President Trump under scrutiny. His administration had declined to defend the FDA’s rules on the merits but argued the courts should let the FDA finish its review.
As of early last year, 27% of all abortions in the U.S. were performed by telehealth, fueling a rise in overall abortions nationwide.
The total went from 1,058,650 in 2023 to 1,123,920 in 2024 and 1,126,470 in 2025, according to the Guttmacher Institute. The abortion pill now accounts for roughly two-thirds of all terminations.
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In light of those figures, Ms. Dannenfelser called Monday for the firing of FDA Commissioner Marty Makary. She said he showed “indifference” in the agency’s handling of the abortion drug.
She said women in states that have strict bans still have 90,000 abortions each year, which she said was directly attributable to mail access to chemical abortion.
“The ’states-only’ strategy, promoted out of fear after Dobbs, is an abject failure in the face of blue states brazenly violating state sovereignty and nullifying hard-won pro-life gains,” Ms. Dannenfelser said in a statement.
She said mailing the drug could facilitate male buyers trying to coerce women into terminating pregnancies.
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Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who challenged the FDA, attacked the pharmaceutical firms for rushing to the Supreme Court. She said she remains confident that “life and the law will win in the end.”
“Big abortion pharma claims they need an emergency stay because they will lose massive amounts of money if they can’t kill more babies quickly and efficiently by mail without medical oversight,” said Ms. Murrill, a Republican.
The American Civil Liberties Union called the delay “a positive short-term development.”
“The Supreme Court needs to put an end to this baseless attack on our reproductive freedom, once and for all,” said ACLU lawyer Julia Kaye.
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• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.