A pharmaceutical company that makes the drug mifepristone filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court on Saturday to halt a lower court’s decision to block patients from getting the abortion pill by mail.
Danco Laboratories asked the high court for an administrative stay on the Friday ruling from the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana pausing telehealth access to mifepristone. It said the ruling “injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions” and forces the company, medical providers, patients and pharmacies “to guess at what is allowed and what is not.”
“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,” it said, asking the justices to immediately hear arguments in the case before their summer recess.
The filing elevates abortion pill access as a potential issue in this year’s high-stakes midterm elections — putting the Trump administration in a politically fraught position. During the last midterm elections in 2022, after the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, voters resoundingly backed state ballot measures and candidates who supported abortion rights, quelling an expected Republican wave.
Recommended
Mifepristone is a pill used in a two-drug regimen to terminate a pregnancy. In 2025, telehealth access to abortion pills increased in states with total bans on the procedure, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
The Food and Drug Administration green-lit prescription abortion pills via telehealth under the Biden administration in 2021, which anti-abortion advocates have been fighting to reverse ever since.
In 2024, the Supreme Court rejected an effort to revoke access to mifepristone, ruling that the anti-abortion doctors who filed the lawsuit did not have standing to do so.
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.