Court blocks mailing prescriptions of abortion pill mifepristone : NPR

Mifepristone pills sit on a table at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Ames, Iowa, July 18, 2024.

Charlie Neibergall/AP

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Charlie Neibergall/AP

A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common methods of abortion in the United States by blocking the shipment of mifepristone. A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals requires that the abortion pill be dispensed only in person at clinics. Since the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and authorized the enforcement of abortion bans, mail prescriptions have become a major means of providing abortion, including in states where bans are in effect. The ruling paves the way for a likely appeal to the Supreme Court.

A federal appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common methods of abortion in the United States by blocking the mailing of mifepristone prescriptions.

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

“Every abortion facilitated by the FDA’s action overturns Louisiana’s ban on medication abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a moral person,’” the decision states.

Judges have long deferred to the Food and Drug Administration’s judgments about the safety and appropriate 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 president’s direction.

The justices noted in their ruling that the FDA “could not say when this review might be completed and admitted that it was still collecting data.”

In a court filing, Louisiana’s attorney general and a woman who claims she was forced to take abortion pills asked that FDA rules be returned to the days when pills were allowed to be prescribed and dispensed only in person.

A Louisiana-based federal judge ruled last month that the benefits infringed on the state’s abortion ban, but did not immediately repeal the regulations.

Since the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade and authorized the enforcement of abortion bans, mail prescriptions have become a major means of providing abortion, including in states where bans are in effect.

“This is going to affect patient access to abortion and miscarriage care in every state across the country,” said ACLU attorney Julia Kaye. “When telemedicine is restricted, it is rural communities, low-income people, people with disabilities, survivors of domestic violence, and communities of color who suffer the most.”

Mifepristone was approved in 2000 as a safe and effective way to end early pregnancies. It is usually used in combination with a second medicine, misoprostol.

Due to rare cases of excessive bleeding, the FDA initially placed strict limits on who could prescribe and dispense the pill — only by specially certified doctors and only after an in-person appointment during which the person would receive the pill.

Both of these requirements were dropped 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 use the pill safely without direct supervision.

Friday’s ruling paves the way for a likely appeal to the Supreme Court.

The conservative-majority high court struck down abortion as a national right in 2022, but unanimously preserved access to mifepristone two years later.

That 2024 ruling, however, sidestepped the fundamental issues by ruling that the anti-abortion doctors behind the case lacked the legal standing to sue.