The U.S. Supreme Court has decided that patients can continue to get mifepristone, one of the two drugs used for medication abortion, via telehealth and by mail. At least for now.

A lower court had temporarily blocked this access nationwide in early May 2026. The case now returns to that lower court, although it may well make it back to the Supreme Court in the future.

Since 2023, almost two-thirds of abortions in the United States have involved mifepristone, and since late 2024 one-quarter of all abortions occur through abortion pills provided via telehealth.

As scholars who study laws affecting reproductive health, we believe the outcome of this case will have an enormous impact on access to abortion care across the country.

In states with abortion bans, telehealth prescriptions have allowed women to get abortions anyway. But the case is also significant to those in states without abortion bans, especially women with low incomes and disabilities or who live in rural areas, where reproductive services are extremely limited.

How did the case get to this point?

The case began in October 2025, when Louisiana argued that the Biden administration’s allowance of telehealth abortions was for “avowedly political reasons.” The state asserted that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had insufficient evidence to remove the requirement that the drug be dispensed in person, which had been in place from 2000 through 2021.

The state also argued that mailing mifepristone violated an 1873 federal law known as the Comstock Act. This law, which makes it a crime to mail or ship any “lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article” and anything that “is advertised or described in........

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