Updated on: May 2, 2026 / 7:50 PM EDT / CBS/AP
Danco Laboratories asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Saturday to block a ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that curtailed mail-order access to the abortion pill mifepristone, seeking emergency relief while appeals continue. The appeals court’s unanimous decision, issued a day earlier, ordered that mifepristone be dispensed only in person at clinics, effectively overruling FDA rules that had permitted telemedicine prescribing and mailing of the drug.
In its filing, Danco said the 5th Circuit’s decision “injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions.” The appeals court defended its action by saying the FDA’s regulation “creates an effective way for an out-of-state prescriber to place the drug in the hands of Louisianans in defiance of Louisiana law” and argued that every abortion facilitated under the FDA’s rules undermines Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions.
The ruling was hailed by antiabortion advocates as a win against expanding online prescribing and mailing of abortion pills, a distribution method that grew after the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that allowed states to enforce abortion restrictions. Earlier in the case, a federal judge in Louisiana found the FDA’s relaxed dispensing rules conflicted with the state’s abortion ban but did not immediately reinstate the pre-pandemic restrictions.
Historically, federal courts have tended to defer to the FDA’s safety judgments. The 5th Circuit noted the agency is conducting a new safety review at the direction of the White House but said agency officials “could not say when that review might be complete and admitted it was still collecting data.”
Louisiana’s attorney general and a woman who says she was coerced into taking abortion pills asked courts to restore pre-pandemic requirements that mifepristone be prescribed and dispensed only after an in-person visit and by specially certified providers. Those older limits were originally adopted because of rare risks such as excessive bleeding.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA relaxed those requirements after more than two decades of monitoring and reviewing dozens of studies involving thousands of patients. Under the Biden administration, the agency concluded people could safely use mifepristone without direct in-person supervision, allowing telemedicine prescribing and mailing of the drug.
Advocates for abortion access condemned the appeals court’s decision. American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Julia Kaye said the ruling “shamelessly packaged lies and propaganda as an excuse to restrict abortion” and warned that losing telemedicine options will cut off care for many people, including those in rural areas, survivors of intimate partner violence, and people with disabilities. Reproductive Freedom for All called the 5th Circuit decision “one step closer to a national abortion ban,” accusing Louisiana of relying on debunked science and pledging to continue the fight as the case moves toward the Supreme Court.
Mifepristone, approved by the FDA in 2000 and typically used with misoprostol to end early pregnancies, has been central to legal battles over medication abortion. The conservative-majority Supreme Court in 2024 preserved access to mifepristone unanimously, but that ruling avoided addressing the underlying questions by finding the original challengers lacked legal standing. The current litigation centers on whether courts may override FDA determinations and how far states can go in restricting telemedicine and the mailing of medication abortion.