The pharmaceutical company Danco, one of the manufacturers of the pill mifepristone, filed an emergency appeal this Saturday before the Supreme Court of Justice to restore the mailing of prescriptions for the pill, one of the most common abortion methods in the United States, after a lower court blocked it on Friday.
A panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, based in New Orleans, required that the abortion pill be distributed only in person at clinics.
In addition to asking for the Fifth Circuit’s ruling to be stayed, Danco asked the Supreme Court justices to take up the case and hear arguments in an “urgent” hearing before their summer recess.
The company cited the “confusion and disruption” that will result from the “immediate and general” effect of the lower court order.
“Each abortion facilitated by the FDA’s action nullifies Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is a human being from the moment of conception and is therefore a legal person,’” the ruling states.
Another pharmaceutical company, GenBioPro, is expected to file a similar appeal, The New York Times reported.
Since the 2022 Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade and allowed the implementation of abortion bans, mail-order prescriptions have become a primary avenue for providing abortions, even in those states where such bans apply.
