A way to further restrict access to abortion in the United States. On May 1st, an ultra-conservative appeals court temporarily blocked the possibility for American women to have access to the abortion pill directly in their mailboxes.
On Thursday, May 14th, the Supreme Court temporarily suspended this decision until it decides whether or not to take up the case on the merits after the appeal from the laboratories Danco and GenBioPro, the manufacturers of the pill in question. Mifepristone is a medication used in medical abortions, which accounted for nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States in 2023. More than 7.5 million American women have used it for abortions as well as miscarriages since it was approved by health authorities in 2000.
Abortion in the United States, a right dismantled state by state
Forcing women to have an in-person medical appointment would further restrict access to abortion in a country where, since 2022 and the historic Supreme Court ruling, the right to abortion is no longer guaranteed at the federal level and is now in the hands of each state. About twenty states have, since 2022, banned, with very rare exceptions, or severely restricted access to abortion, whether it is done medicinally or surgically.
Obtaining the abortion pill through a teleprescription in another state with protective abortion legislation and having it delivered by mail has become a way to circumvent these outdated policies. In the United States, over a quarter of people who had medically supervised abortions in 2025 did so via teleprescription, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a leading organization on the subject.
“Authorizing nationwide continuation of teleprescription, mail delivery, and pharmacy dispensing of Mifepristone brings a greatly anticipated relief after troubled weeks. But we are not yet completely relieved,” emphasized Kelly Baden, vice president of the Guttmacher Institute. “Today’s decision buys us time but does not bring us peace of mind,” added Nancy Northup, head of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“Access to Mifepristone remains strongly threatened” by this legal process and also by the Trump administration, which launched “a review, motivated by political considerations, of this pill, with the nearly veiled aim of making it harder to obtain,” she continued. Indeed, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has initiated a safety reevaluation of Mifepristone under pressure from the anti-abortion camp since Donald Trump returned to the White House.
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