Melissa Murray

So the Fifth Circuit basically had this nationwide ban that went into effect on Friday.

They issued it at around 4 o'clock Central Time, 5 o'clock in the East, and it is a nationwide ban.

And on Monday, the Supreme Court, through the circuit justice who is assigned to the Fifth Circuit, this is Justice Alito, so interesting, he stayed the ruling.

This is obviously important because a stay means that Mifepristone is now available again on a nationwide basis.

But one of the things that our friend of the pod, Steve Vladek, noted in his substack and on Blue Sky is that Justice Alito said,

will issue stays in cases that come to him on an emergency basis.

But in cases where he's more sympathetic to the causes, the stays are usually indefinite.

For cases where he's not particularly sympathetic to the causes or the issues underlying the case, he makes the stay time limited.

And in this case, it was a time limited stay.

So this sets up

a schedule for briefing and whatnot.

And this will be back before the court, but the stay will not be finite.

There's going to be a timeline on this.

Well, I do buy the argument.

Again, the arguments that were made and rejected by the court in FDA versus the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine talked about, you know, like you have to, like when people are using the Fipristone, the doctors are denied the aesthetic privilege of watching babies born.

It was just like,

Okay.

So it's like really fanciful stuff.

And I don't know that it's that much better here.

I mean, they're basically arguing in very fetal person forward terms that the state of Louisiana is prevented from protecting unborn life because Mifepristone is available nationwide and can be distributed via telehealth and through the mail.