A little more than a year into the Trump administration, abortion access in the United States, like the total number of abortions, remains surprisingly unchanged. Most Americans who end pregnancies rely on the medications mifepristone and misoprostol, which account for more than half of all abortions nationwide. Recent research by the Guttmacher Institute showed that the number of abortions in the U.S. has held steady, with telehealth access explaining an increase in the number of procedures in ban states. Given that the administration seems content for the moment to do nothing about abortion, a number of conservative states have filed suit to force some kind of action. The latest federal court ruling in the critical and lengthy ongoing fight over mifepristone has allowed the administration to maintain the status quo for now. But for the longer term, last week’s federal decision out of Louisiana sends a clear warning: If the Trump administration doesn’t introduce new restrictions on abortion medication, federal judges will likely do the job instead.

In 2024 Donald Trump campaigned on the idea of letting each state set its own policy on abortion, but conservatives hoped that he was just saying what he needed to say to win. After his victory, prominent anti-abortion groups asked the incoming Trump Food and Drug Administration to impose new national restrictions on mifepristone. Most importantly, abortion foes demanded that the FDA reinstate an in-person dispensation requirement that would make it impossible for people to receive treatment via telehealth or for doctors in blue states to send pills to places that criminalize abortion. Others believed that the Trump Department of Justice would use the Comstock Act, a 19th-century obscenity law, to prosecute people for sending or receiving abortion medication by mail.

But since his second inauguration, Trump instead has done practically nothing on mifepristone. Of course, there have been other abortion-related moves. Recently, the administration announced efforts to gut Title X, which covers family planning. In passing the Big Beautiful Bill, Congress at least temporarily defunded Planned........

© Slate