The company behind the chemical abortion pill mifepristone, Danco Laboratories, urged the Supreme Court to pause a federal appeals court ruling blocking the drug’s distribution by mail.
“It bears emphasis how unprecedented the Fifth Circuit’s order is,” Danco wrote in its application to the Court. “Never before has a federal court purported to immediately enjoin a several years’ old drug approval; restrict a distribution system for that drug that manufacturers, providers, patients, and pharmacies have all been using for years; or reinstate conditions that FDA determined do not meet the mandatory statutory criteria.”
“The Alliance district court provided for time to appeal before its injunction would take effect, and when the Fifth Circuit later ruled on the merits, the Court of Appeals specifically highlighted the time FDA and Danco would have to prepare before any injunction took effect as a result of this Court’s stay,” the filing read. It added that the “resulting chaos for patients, providers, pharmacies, and the drug regulatory system is a quintessential irreparable harm that underscores the need for emergency relief from this Court.”
Last week, the appeals court wrote in its order that every abortion facilitated by the FDA’s action to send abortion pills without seeing the patient in person “cancels Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person.'”
In November, congressional Republicans called for the Trump administration to end the practice of mail-in abortion pills.
In a letter sent to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Food and Drug Commissioner Marty Makary, 175 Republicans moved to “respectfully ask that the deleterious and grossly underreported effects on women of the drug mifepristone be aggressively investigated and decisive action taken to protect women from harm.” They further requested that the health officials “reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone.”
Update May 4 at 8:18 am PT:
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito halted the ruling that prevents the abortion pill from being prescribed without an in-person visit. The decision restores mail-in access to the drug for one week.
