Drugmaker asks Supreme Court to restore abortion pill telehealth access

Danco Laboratories asked the Supreme Court to immediately pause a federal appeals court ruling that cut off telehealth prescribing and mail delivery of mifepristone nationwide, raising the stakes for abortion access even in states where abortion remains legal.

The emergency filing came Saturday, one day after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans issued a unanimous decision that reinstated an in-person dispensing requirement while the case continues. If that order takes effect, patients who now receive the medication by telehealth or mail would again have to travel to a clinic or doctor’s office for the drug, a major change for a pill that has become central to medication abortion and early miscarriage care.

Mifepristone, first approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000, is used in nearly two-thirds of U.S. abortions, according to the ACLU. The FDA lifted the nationwide in-person dispensing requirement in 2021, allowing the medication to be prescribed through telehealth and distributed by mail under the current regulatory system. The Fifth Circuit ruling would reverse that access while the broader case proceeds, and the drugmaker is asking the justices to restore the status quo now.

The legal fight comes back to the Supreme Court less than a year after the justices said in June 2024 that anti-abortion plaintiffs lacked standing to challenge the FDA’s regulation changes for mifepristone. This time, the question is more immediate: whether a lower court can force a nationwide rollback of how the drug is dispensed, reaching patients well beyond the states with abortion bans.

Abortion-rights advocates say the effect would be felt far beyond the courtroom. The ruling applies nationally, not just in hostile states, so clinics in places where abortion remains legal could still be barred from mailing the pill or handling it remotely. Mary Ziegler, a law professor at UC Davis, said the case could show what the country looks like when abortion bans are actually in effect. That is why the filing is being treated as more than a procedural step. It is now a test of whether medication abortion can still be accessed at scale, or whether opponents can use the courts to narrow it state by state, and then nationwide.