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Supreme Court pauses ban on access to abortion pills by mail
The Supreme Court Monday temporarily restored access to a popular abortion medication by mail, pausing a lower court ruling issued on Friday that had abruptly cut off one the most common ways abortions are provided. The order signed by Justice Samuel Alito allows women seeking abortions to continue getting the drug mifepristone either at pharmacies or through the mail, without an in-person visit to a doctor, pending a hearing on May 11. Alito’s order gives both sides a chance to file arguments about whether to put anti-mifepristone ruling on hold for a longer time while it goes through an appeals process. New York Attorney General Letitia James and a group of Democratic state attorneys general had already filed a brief asking the court to put the ruling on hold when Alito moved to place an administrative stay. They will now likely argue for the ruling to be paused indefinitely. Federal rules allowing mifepristone to be sent via mail had been in effect for several years and the drug has been repeatedly determined to be safe and effective. The state of Louisiana sued drugmakers who produce mifepristone, asserting that sending the drug to women in the state effectively skirted its ban on abortion. The federal Fifth Circuit appeals court agreed with Louisiana and imposed draconian new restrictions on Friday. Drugmakers who produce mifepristone filed for an emergency stay of the decision, leading to Alito’s ruling. About two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. are carried through medications, usually a combination of mifepristone and a second drug, misoprostol. The wide availability of abortion drugs has helped limit the impact of strict anti-abortion laws that most Republican-led states have started enacting and enforcing since a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision and opened the door to state bans. Some Democratic-led states like New York have also passed laws bolstering abortion rights and also giving legal protection to those who prescribe the drugs via telehealth to patients in states with bans. That sets up a potential conflict with red states like Louisiana and Texas, which have said those providers are violating their laws. The Supreme Court punted on another high-profile abortion medication case when it overturned a Texas appeals court’s ruling on a legal technicality. Any decision, especially one that restricts mifepristone, could have a serious political impact. Significant majorities of Americans believe abor...
US Supreme Court temporarily lifts ban on abortion pill mail delivery
The United States Supreme Court has temporarily reinstated a rule allowing an abortion pill to be prescribed through telemedicine and dispensed through the mail, lifting a judicial ban that narrowed access to the medication nationwide.Justice Samuel Alito issued an interim order on Monday, pausing for one week a decision by the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals to reimpose an older federal rule requiring an in-person clinician visit to receive mifepristone.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemslist 1 of 3US official says China is ‘funding’ Iran, urges Beijing to help open Hormuzlist 2 of 3South Carolina measles outbreak grows to 185 cases amid vaccination worrieslist 3 of 3Who Is Nayib Bukele? El Salvador’s ‘coolest dictator’end of listThe 5th Circuit acted in a challenge to the rule by the Republican-led state of Louisiana.The Supreme Court’s action, called an “administrative stay”, gives the justices more time to review emergency requests by two manufacturers of mifepristone to ensure that the drug can be provided via telehealth and the mail while the legal challenge plays out.Alito ordered Louisiana to respond to the drugmakers’ requests by Thursday and indicated that the administrative stay would expire on May 11. The court would be expected to extend the interim stay or formally decide the requests by that time.Alito, one of the nine-member court’s six conservative justices, acted because he is designated by the court to oversee emergency matters that arise in a group of states that includes Louisiana.The case puts the contentious issue of abortion back in front of the justices, who must confront another effort by abortion opponents to scale back access to mifepristone, with the November US congressional elections looming.The court in 2024 unanimously rejected an initial bid by anti-abortion groups and doctors to roll back Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations that had eased access to the drug, ruling that these plaintiffs lacked the necessary legal standing to pursue the challenge.Mifepristone, given FDA regulatory approval in 2000, is taken with another drug called misoprostol to perform medication abortions, a method that now accounts for more than 60 percent of all abortions in the US.The ongoing battles over abortion rights follow the court’s 2022 ruling that overturned its 1973 Roe v Wade precedent that had legalised abortion nationwide.That ruling has prompted 13 states to enact near-total bans on the procedure, while seve...
Supreme Court restores access to abortion pill by mail for now
Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. on Monday issued an order that temporarily allows patients to continue accessing a widely used abortion pill through the mail. The decision came after two ...
Supreme Court asked to restore access to mail-order abortion pill ...
A pharma company that produces mifepristone asked the Supreme Court to lift a lower court's ruling barring health providers from dispensing the abortion pill by mail.
