The Supreme Court restored access on Thursday to mail-order abortion pills nationwide, lifting an appeals court’s block on a 2023 Food and Drug Administration rule that had removed the in-person requirement for mifepristone.In an unsigned order, the high court ruled 7-2 in favor of issuing a stay, which indefinitely pauses a May 1 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that had restored an in-person screening requirement for access to the abortion pill. The majority did not elaborate on its ruling. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito each wrote their own fiery dissents disagreeing with the high court’s decision to lift the lower court’s block.“I write separately to note that, as Louisiana argued below, it is a criminal offense to ship mifepristone for use in abortions. The Comstock Act bans using ‘the mails’ to ship any ‘drug … for producing abortion,'” Thomas wrote, saying he would deny the emergency petition brought by two abortion pill drugmakers to lift the block on selling the pills online and transporting them to patients via mail.
“Applicants are not entitled to a stay of an adverse court order based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise. They cannot, in any legally relevant sense, be irreparably harmed by a court order that makes it more difficult for them to commit crimes. And, whereas it would ‘serve the public interest’ to ‘reduc[e]’ applicants’ ‘opportunity to commit crimes,’ a stay would have the opposite effect. I respectfully dissent,” Thomas added.
