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The Supreme Court abortion pills case, explained

How Louisiana brought mifepristone back to SCOTUS.

Abortion pills have been on a bit of a journey in the United States over the past few weeks.

It starts in Louisiana: The state sued the Food and Drug Administration late last year, seeking to eliminate access to the abortion pill mifepristone through telehealth and mail order.

On May 1, the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Louisiana, temporarily blocking access to telehealth abortion and pills by mail nationwide. Then the Supreme Court weighed in; Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative opponent of abortion rights, nonetheless temporarily restored access to the pill by telehealth and mail while the Court considers at the merits of the case.

The Supreme Court gets thrown back into the abortion wars

Now, the Court says it will maintain its stay on the Fifth Circuit’s decision until at least 5pm on Thursday as it deliberates.

To understand the intricacies of the court case and what’s at stake, Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Alice Miranda Ollstein, a senior healthcare reporter at Politico.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

By the end of the week, could the nature of access to abortion pills across the country change?

Yes. What Louisiana is demanding is that the Supreme Court allow restrictions to go into effect right now, even before the case is finally resolved. Louisiana says that every day that patients in our state can get abortion pills online and get them shipped in — in violation of our state’s ban — is a day we are being injured as a state. They’re claiming sovereign injury.

They say the ability of patients around the country to access these pills by telehealth, to have them prescribed by a doctor online and sent by mail, is helping people in their state circumvent the law. And that’s why they want the........

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