Supreme Court Allows Providers to Continue Telehealth Access to Abortion Pill as Legal Battle Continues
In Montana, where abortion is legal, local providers praised the high court's Thursday ruling allowing them to continue distributing mifepristone by mail, saying it has "revolutionized" access for rural patients
By Zoë Buhrmaster
Family planning specialists saw some relief Thursday when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that telehealth access to mifepristone would be permitted for the time being. Remote access to the common abortion medication has been up in the air since a federal appeals court sought to roll back nationwide access to the drug on May 1. The Supreme Court placed the lower court’s ruling on hold until May 14 after drug manufacturers appealed the decision.
“It is a relief,” Helen Weems, cofounder of All Families Healthcare in Whitefish, said Thursday. “But we should not be forced to practice medicine in this way –– waiting for a decision from a court to continue doing what we already know is safe, effective, lifesaving health care.”
In an emergency order, seven of the nine justices stayed an appellate court’s ruling that restricted access to the medication nationwide, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissenting. The lower court’s ruling will remain blocked as the legal battle plays out.
The case challenging nationwide access to the drug comes from the state of Louisiana, which last year asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to repeal the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the drug for telehealth, a step taken during the COVID-19 pandemic. The state argued that remote access undermines Louisiana’s strict abortion ban. The Fifth Circuit agreed with Louisiana, leaving nationwide telehealth access to the drug in jeopardy until two pharmaceutical companies that manufacture mifepristone asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
In his May 14 dissent, Justice Thomas referenced the Comstock Act, an anti-obscenity law from 1873 that made it a federal offense to transport “obscene” materials in the mail such as contraceptive or abortion materials. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its Dobbs decision in 2022, the Office of Legal Counsel for the Department of Justice issued a memorandum opinion that the Comstock Act did not prohibit mailing abortion medications if used lawfully. Thomas argued that the act still applied to such medications, and that the drug manufacturers were not entitled to a stay “based on lost profits of their criminal enterprise.”
At All Families Healthcare in Whitefish, Weems and her staff have sent mifepristone via the mail since the FDA approved telehealth access for the drug during the COVID-19 pandemic. With their detailed telehealth program, Weems said medication by mail “revolutionized” access for patients in rural Montana who often have to drive hours to one of the state’s few clinics.
“Even though we have reproductive rights in the state, doesn’t mean everyone has equal access,” Weems said. She called the Comstock Act that Thomas referenced in his dissent a “shame-based, Draconian punishment from the 1800s.”
In Montana, abortion rights have been enshrined in the state’s constitution since 2024, though abortion clinics have continued to face legal battles in the state.
“We really have to, as a nation and as a movement, stay on our toes because Comstock is what’s coming,” Weems said. “Why would we want to bring something back from 1873?”