On Friday, May 1, Chicago Abortion Fund executive director Megan Jeyifo was getting ready for a fundraising event when she heard the breaking news about a court decision that severely curtailed nationwide access to the abortion pill mifepristone. She immediately sent a staff-wide message on Slack.

“Mifepristone by telehealth is no longer accessible for anyone seeking abortion care in the country,” she wrote. “We’re working to understand what this will mean for our grantees who are receiving telehealth now and in the short term. We know how critical telehealth abortion care is, and this is a very difficult thing to digest.”

Across the reproductive health landscape, similar messages were sent to staff as providers everywhere grappled with the sudden unanimous decision from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. As my colleague Nina Martin reported earlier this month, their move “granted Louisiana’s request for an injunction against FDA rule changes from 2023 that have allowed blue-state telehealth providers to send mifepristone to thousands of patients every month in states where abortion is banned.” More than a quarter of abortions in the US occur via telemedicine. By Monday, the US Supreme Court temporarily reinstated access to mifepristone, which, with misoprostol, is prescribed to induce an abortion or aid in a miscarriage.

Now, the Supreme Court is expected to make a decision in the case as early as Thursday. Meanwhile, abortion providers as well as the directors of some of the country’s largest abortion funds and support hotlines told me this week that........

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