The makers of mifepristone, which is part of a two-drug regimen often called “the abortion pill,” asked the Supreme Court on May 2 to allow the prescription medication to be sent in the mail after a lower court blocked it.
The application for an emergency stay was filed one day after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit paused a Food and Drug Administration rule that allowed the abortion drug to be mailed.
“Never before has a federal court purported to immediately enjoin a several years’ old drug approval; restrict a distribution system for that drug that manufacturers, providers, patients, and pharmacies have all been using for years; or reinstate conditions that FDA determined do not meet the mandatory statutory criteria,” lawyers for Danco Laboratories LLC expressed in court documents reviewed by The Epoch Times.
Lawyers argued that Friday’s ruling by a three-judge panel in New Orleans “injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions.”
The legal team added that the controversial decision resulted in “chaos for patients, providers, pharmacies, and the drug-regulatory system” adding it caused “quintessential irreparable harm that underscores the need for emergency relief.”
Mifepristone is part of a two-drug regimen that allows a woman “to end a pregnancy up to 70 days into gestation,” according to Johns Hopkins University.
The FDA first approved mifepristone in 2000, but doctors were only allowed to prescribe to a woman after she had three in-person visits.
The process changed in 2023 under the Biden administration, when the former president issued an executive order that provided a pathway for women to avoid all on-location visits with their doctor and instead order the drug online and have it be shipped to their house.
The state of Louisiana, which has strict abortion laws, challenged the mail-order pill rule in 2025, suggesting the justification for allowing the shipments was based on “flawed or nonexistent data.”
U.S. Fifth Circuit Court ruled on May 1 that it would block the abortion drug from being shipped via mail until the FDA could prove that it would be “safe and effective” in the United States.
Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill called Friday’s decision a “victory for life” and suggested that thousands of pregnancies in the state will not be terminated through “illegal mail-order abortion pills.”
Meanwhile, Democrats expressed concern about how this will impact women’s access to care.
“This decision creates new barriers to care,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) wrote on X. “We must restore women’s access to health care.”
“Let’s be clear: mifepristone is safe, effective & FDA approved,” Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) wrote on social media. “We won’t stop fighting to protect our reproductive freedom & this basic, essential form of healthcare.”