Supreme Court allows mail-order abortion drugs

By Andrew Rice
The Center Square

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that women can continue to access abortion drugs through the mail without making an in-person doctor’s visit, while a lawsuit continues against the practice.

Justices on the high court graned two emergency requests from Danco Laboratories and GenProBio, two makers of the abortion drug mifepristone.

The manufacturers challenged a ruling in Lousiana that upheld the state’s ban on prescribing abortion drugs without an in-person doctor’s visit. In 2023, the Biden administration finalized a rule to allow the drugs to be obtained without an in-person visit.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the majority’s decision. Alito said the litigation limits a state’s ability to make determinations on abortion, as granted in the high court’s 2022 decision that overturned the constitutional right to abortion.

“Louisiana’s efforts have been thwarted by certain medical providers, private organizations, and States that abhor laws like Louisiana’s and seek to undermine their enforcement,” Alito wrote.

Thomas said allowing abortion drugs to be prescribed without an in-person doctors visit is a crime.

“[Danco Laboratories] cannot, in any legally relevant sense, be irreparably harmed by a court order that makes it more difficult for them to commit crimes,” Thomas wrote in his dissent.

In 2023, approximately two-thirds of all abortions in the United States were through medications.

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s President Marjorie Dannenfelser said she was “disappointed” with the decision.

“We are deeply disappointed the Supreme Court will not respond to the harm occurring nationwide with mercy and stop the dangerous mail-order abortion drug regime,” Dannenfelser said in a statement provided to The Center Square. “Today’s decision does not touch the merits of the case as it returns to the 5th Circuit. The reality is clear: The mail-order abortion drug experiment has failed countless women. Across red and blue states alike, women who never wanted to abort their babies have been coerced and poisoned because of the lack of oversight. By the FDA’s admission, the research never supported removing in-person doctor visits, and Secretary Kennedy himself testified that the Biden administration twisted the data.”

As the case plays out, access to the abortion drug is expected to be uninterrupted until into next year. The high court could be petitioned again to rule on the merits of the lawsuit after litigation begins.