Louisiana has asked the Supreme Court to halt mail access to mifepristone, the abortion pill, according to reporting by The New York Times (May 7, 2026). The move follows a federal appeals court ruling that temporarily blocked an FDA regulation which had substantially expanded mail-order access to the drug.
The long-arc context matters here. The legal theory underlying these challenges — that federal postal statutes can be used to ban the mailing of abortion-related materials — traces directly to the Comstock Act of 1873, a law Congress passed to suppress obscenity through the mails and which advocates of abortion restriction have worked for years to revive as a national prohibition mechanism. That strategy now has a federal appellate foothold.
Every time Congress has given a single federal agency the power to choke off a constitutional right through administrative action, the courts have eventually been forced to draw a line. Where they draw it this time will determine whether FDA drug approvals still mean what they say.