NEW ORLEANS — Mail-order access to a drug used in the most common form of abortion in the U.S. would end under a federal appeals court ruling issued Wednesday that cannot take effect until the Supreme Court weighs in.
The decision by three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned part of a lower-court ruling that would have revoked the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone. But it left intact part of the ruling that would end the availability of the drug by mail, allow it to be used through only the seventh week of pregnancy rather than the 10th, and require that it be administered in the presence of a physician.
