The US Supreme Court has ordered an administrative stay on a ruling the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued on Friday in State of Louisiana et al. v. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) et al. The temporary stay (which was requested by mifepristone manufacturers and intervenors in the case GenBioPro and Danco) will allow telehealth, mailing and pharmacy provision of mifepristone to resume, as it has since the FDA permanently removed in-person dispensing requirements in 2023.
The Supreme Court’s stay extends to next Monday, May 11, when the Court is expected to make a ruling on whether the in-person dispensing requirements can be reimposed while the case proceeds at the Fifth Circuit.
On Friday, May 1, the Fifth Circuit ordered the FDA to temporarily reimpose medically unnecessary in-person dispensing requirements on mifepristone—a decision that caused immediate confusion for providers and patients and, if allowed to stand, would upend abortion access nationwide.
As of the first half of 2025, about one in four clinician-provided abortions in the United States were provided via telehealth and based on the latest available data the vast majority of them (98% as of 2020) used the combined mifepristone–misoprostol regimen.
The end goal of this legal attack is to eliminate telehealth prescribing, pharmacy dispensing, and mailing of mifepristone nationwide, including in states that have not enacted total abortion bans.
Below, we’re sharing a statement from our vice president for public policy, along with key data and resources:
Statement from Kelly Baden, Vice President for Public Policy at the Guttmacher Institute:
“Once again, abortion patients and providers are facing the chaos, confusion and fear that anti-abortion policymakers and courts are inflicting on them. The Supreme Court’s administrative stay provides critical short-term relief for patients and providers across the country. Blocking the baseless in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone from going into effect for a week may help to offset some disruptions to care following the Fifth Circuit ruling last week—but the underlying threat to access remains just as dire as it was before.”
“Nothing short of full access to all methods of abortion care for everyone who needs it is acceptable. The safety of telehealth provision of medication abortion using mifepristone is without question, and health care policies should be based on evidence, not politics. For nearly four years, the Dobbs decision has caused tremendous harm to families, patients, providers and communities; it’s time for the Court and policymakers to follow the science, and stop the attacks on abortion care once and for all.”
Here’s what the data show about medication abortion use and how reinstating in-person dispensing requirements could upend the abortion care landscape:
- 65% of abortions in the United States were medication abortions in 2023.
- Most of these medication abortions were provided in clinics, but data from the Society of Family Planning shows that in the first half of 2025, one in four abortions were provided via telehealth.
Guttmacher data on medication abortion in states without total bans:
- Medication abortion accounted for the majority of abortions provided in most US states without total abortion bans in 2023—with proportions being the lowest in the District of Columbia (44%) and Ohio (46%) and the highest in Montana (84%) and Wyoming (95%).
Data on medication abortion in states with total bans, including Louisiana:
- As of May 4, 2026, 13 states are enforcing total bans on abortion care.
- New data from Guttmacher’s Monthly Abortion Provision Study show 91,000 abortions were provided via telehealth to states with total bans in 2025—this includes 9,360 abortions provided via telehealth to Louisiana.
- Louisiana has been one of the primary states attacking shield law providers. In January 2025, Louisiana issued the first criminal indictment of an abortion provider after the Dobbs decision, alleging that a New York physician provided abortion pills via telehealth to a Louisiana teenager.
Any decision that reimposes medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone would cause major disruptions to abortion provision and further limit patients’ options.
- The two-drug combination of mifepristone and misoprostol accounted for more than 98% of medication abortions in the United States in 2020, the last year for which comprehensive data are available.
- Misoprostol-only medication abortion regimens are supported by leading professional and medical organizations in the United States and around the world. However, it is unclear how widely a misoprostol-only protocol might be offered by abortion providers if mifepristone provision were restricted or to what extent it would be taken up by patients.