A way to further restrict access to abortion in the United States. On May 1, an ultraconservative appeals court temporarily blocked American women from accessing the abortion pill directly in their mailboxes.
On Thursday, May 14, the Supreme Court temporarily suspended this decision until it decides whether or not to take up the case on the merits after the appeal by the laboratories Danco and GenBioPro, the manufacturers of the pill in question. Mifepristone is a drug used in medical abortions, which accounted for nearly two out of three abortions in the United States in 2023. Over 7.5 million American women have used it, for abortions as well as miscarriages, since it was approved by regulatory authorities in 2000.
Abortion in the United States, a dismantled right, 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. Since 2022, around twenty states have either banned, with rare exceptions, or severely restricted access to abortion, whether by medical or surgical means.
Obtaining the abortion pill by prescription in another state with protective abortion laws and having it delivered by mail has become a way to circumvent these outdated policies. In the United States, more than one in four people who had a medically supervised abortion in 2025 did so via a prescription, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a leading organization on the subject.
“Allowing national continuation of prescription, postal delivery, and pharmacy dispensing of Mifepristone brings much-needed relief after unsettling weeks. But we are not yet completely relieved,” says Kelly Baden, vice president of the Guttmacher Institute. “Today’s decision gives us time but does not bring us peace of mind,” adds Nancy Northup, head of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“The access to Mifepristone remains strongly threatened” by this judicial process and by the Trump administration, which launched “a review, motivated by political considerations, of this pill, with the aim of making it harder to obtain,” she continues. Indeed, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has initiated a safety review of Mifepristone under pressure from the anti-abortion camp since Donald Trump returned to the White House.
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