The Supreme Court decided to keep the status quo in place for medication abortion access Thursday.
The high court's order means the abortion pill mifepristone will remain available via telehealth as a case brought by Louisiana against the Food and Drug Administration proceeds through the lower courts.
The Supreme Court stayed a May 1 ruling from the New Orleans-based, U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals which would have banned mifepristone from being mailed. The appeals court ruling would have applied to the whole country, not just states like Louisiana that have abortion bans.
Thursday's decision came in the form of order from the court issued around 5:30 p.m., about 30 minutes past a deadline the court set for itself.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented publicly.
The appeals court ruling would have re-instituted prescribing regulations from before the pandemic that required patients to receive mifepristone in person in a doctor's office or clinic.
In his dissent, Alito railed at his fellow justices calling the order "unreasoned" and "remarkable."
"What is at stake is the perpetration of a scheme to undermine our decision in Dobbs," Alito writes, referring to the case that he authored that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Dobbs "restored the right of each State to decide how to regulate abortions within its borders," Alito continues.
The FDA determined that in-person dispensing of mifepristone was medically unnecessary in 2021. The state of Louisiana sued the FDA last fall, arguing that telemedicine access undermines the state's abortion ban.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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