Supreme Court allows abortion pill use temporarily

The Supreme Court has ruled that the abortion pill mifepristone may continue to be obtained and delivered by mail.

Two manufacturers that make the pill had asked the Supreme Court to intervene after a lower court placed significant restrictions on access to mifepristone as part of an ongoing lawsuit, News.Az reports, citing BBC.

Thursday's order from the high court blocks the appeals court's decision while litigation plays out in lower courts.

Abortion pills are the most common method of terminating pregnancies in the US - especially in states where abortion is banned.

The Supreme Court's most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dissented.

In 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allowed doctors to send pills without seeing patients in person, giving women the ability to receive the pills by mail or at a pharmacy through telemedicine.

Earlier this month, following a lawsuit brought by the state of Louisiana, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily reinstated a requirement that abortion pills be obtained in person.

"Every abortion facilitated by FDA's action cancels Louisiana's ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that 'every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person,'" the appeals court wrote in the order.

Thomas said in his dissent on Thursday that since sending mifepristone by mail is illegal in Louisiana, the drug manufacturers are not entitled to block a court order "based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise."

News.Az 

By Ulviyya Salmanli