Supreme Court pauses abortion pill restrictions from taking effect during appeal

Access to the common abortion pill mifepristone will remain unchanged, for now, after the Supreme Court sided Friday with the Biden administration and paused a lower court ruling.

The justices, in a brief order, said they will put on hold a ruling from a Texas federal judge while the Biden administration’s appeal proceeds.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, two of the court’s conservatives, said they would have denied the request for a pause.

On April 7, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone. Kacsmaryk ruled the agency’s approval process was improperly rushed and resulted in an unsafe drug regimen getting on the market.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week paused part of Kacsmaryk’s ruling until it considers the government’s appeal, temporarily preserving the FDA’s original approval of mifepristone. But it left in place another part of the ruling that blocked steps the FDA has taken since 2016 to ease access to mifepristone. 

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The high court’s emergency order pauses those remaining portions, which would have otherwise gone into effect Friday night. 

Those preserved changes include allowing mifepristone to be sent through the mail, lifting a requirement for three in-person visits, approving a generic and approving the drug’s use up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy, rather than seven weeks.

The 5th Circuit has scheduled oral argument in the government’s appeal for May 17. Access to mifepristone will remain unchanged at least until the three-judge panel issues its ruling, but a party could then again appeal to the Supreme Court.