Culture and Social Issues

Drugmaker Asks SCOTUS To Let Mail-Order Abortions Continue Despite Lower Court Order

(Flickr/Supreme Court Following Facade Restoration)

A pharmaceutical company that makes the chemical abortion pill mifepristone urged the Supreme Court on Saturday to temporarily halt a federal appeals court’s Friday ruling blocking the drug’s distribution by mail.

One day after a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked a Biden-era policy allowing the mail-order of mifepristone, Danco Laboratories applied to the nation’s highest court asking it to stay the ruling.

“It bears emphasis how unprecedented the Fifth Circuit’s order is,” attorneys for Danco wrote in the Saturday 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 [Food and Drug Administration] determined do not meet the mandatory statutory criteria.”

The FDA approved mifepristone in 2000, under the Clinton administration, but for over two decades, women were required to obtain the drug in person. The FDA first allowed the mail-order of the abortion drug in 2021, then citing the COVID-19 pandemic, and made this policy permanent in 2023 — with both developments happening when former President Joe Biden was in the White House.

“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,” Danco’s application continued.

President Donald Trump had appointed two of the Fifth Circuit judges that temporarily blocked the mail-order of mifepristone, Politico reported. Former President George W. Bush appointed the other judge.

In their Friday ruling, the appeals court judges wrote that the Biden-era “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.”

The case involves Rosalie Markezitch, a Louisiana woman who said her boyfriend coerced her to have an abortion using mifepristone pills he ordered by mail from California. If the FDA had not allowed mail-order abortion pills, “Rosalie would have received the protection of a private in-person medical appointment. And if she had been able to tell a doctor that she did not want an abortion, the drugs that took her baby’s life would never have been provided,” according to Louisiana’s lawsuit.

Abortion is illegal in Louisiana with limited maternal health exceptions, and the state in 2024 became the first in the country to classify mifepristone as a controlled and dangerous substance.

The New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit has federal appellate jurisdiction over cases originating in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas’ district courts and is widely considered to be among the most conservative federal appeals circuits.

Danco Laboratories did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

The New York City-based abortion drug manufacturer markets its mifepristone under the brand name “Mifeprex” and with the tagline “The Early Option Pill,” as shown through an image posted on the company’s website. Danco asserts that its drug is a “safe and effective option for ending early pregnancy” and has “been used by more than 6 million patients in the U.S.”

However, studies and pro-life lawmakers have strongly contested claims that mifepristone is “safe and effective,” citing the host of adverse effects on many women who take it.