Court blocks mailing prescriptions of abortion pill mifepristone : NPR

A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common means of abortion in the US by blocking the mailing of mifepristone. A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals requires that the abortion pill be dispensed in-person only at clinics. Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed abortion restrictions to take effect, prescriptions by mail have become a prominent way to provide abortions — including in states where restrictions are in place. The decision sets up a possible appeal to the Supreme Court.

A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common means of abortion in the US by banning the mailing of prescriptions for mifepristone.

A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals requires that the abortion pill be dispensed in-person only at clinics.

“Each abortion facilitated by the FDA’s action voids Louisiana’s ban on therapeutic abortion and undermines its policy that ‘each unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception and, therefore, is a legal person,'” the ruling says.

Judges have long deferred to the Food and Drug Administration’s decisions on the safety and proper regulation of drugs.

FDA officials under President Donald Trump have repeatedly said the agency is conducting a new review of the safety of mifepristone at the direction of the president.

The judges said in their decision that the FDA “cannot say when the review will be completed and acknowledged that it is still collecting data.”

In a court filing, Louisiana’s attorney general and a woman who says she was forced to take abortion pills requested that FDA rules be rolled back when the pills were only allowed to be prescribed and dispensed individually.

A Louisiana-based federal judge ruled last month that the allowances weaken the state’s abortion ban but stopped short of immediately striking down the rules.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed abortion restrictions to take effect, prescriptions by mail have become a prominent way to provide abortions — including in states where restrictions are in place.

“This will impact patients’ access to abortion and abortion care in every state in the country,” said ACLU attorney Julia Kaye. “When telemedicine is restricted, rural communities, low-income people, people with disabilities, survivors of intimate partner violence, and communities of color suffer the most.”

Mifepristone was approved in 2000 as a safe and effective way to terminate early pregnancies. It is usually used in combination with another medication, misoprostol.

Due to rare cases of excessive bleeding, the FDA initially imposed strict limits on who could prescribe and dispense the pill – only specially certified physicians and only after an in-person appointment where the person would receive the pill.

Both of those requirements were removed during the COVID-19 years. At the time, FDA officials under President Joe Biden said that after more than 20 years of monitoring the use of mifepristone and reviewing dozens of studies involving thousands of women, it was clear that women could safely use the pill without direct supervision.

Friday’s decision leaves open the possibility of an appeal to the Supreme Court.

The conservative-majority high court overturned abortion as a nationwide right in 2022, but two years later unanimously upheld access to mifepristone.

However, that 2024 decision sidestepped the main issues by ruling that the anti-abortion doctors behind the case did not have the legal standing to sue.