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Justice Clarence Thomas sharply criticized a recent Supreme Court ruling preserving nationwide access to an abortion medication, arguing the drug manufacturers were operating a “criminal enterprise.”
On Thursday (May 14), the Supreme Court voted 7-2 to uphold nationwide access to the abortion pill mifepristone, according to The Guardian.
In October 2025, the state of Louisiana sued the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for allowing mifepristone to be prescribed remotely and mailed to patients, arguing that mailing the medication violated the state’s abortion restrictions and federal law.
This ruling halted a May 1 order from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that would have significantly restricted nationwide access to mifepristone.
In Thomas’s dissent, he argued that the plaintiffs — Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, two mifepristone manufacturers — had not shown they would experience irreparable harm if access to the medication remained blocked.
“Applicants are not entitled to a stay of an adverse court order based on lost profits from their criminal enterprise,” Thomas wrote. “They cannot, in any legally relevant sense, be irreparably harmed by a court order that makes it more difficult for them to commit crimes.”
He also pointed to the Comstock Act, passed in 1873, which broadly bans the mailing of anything considered “obscene, lewd or lascivious”, arguing mifepristone fits that description.
Thomas was joined by Justice Samuel Alito, who argued the ruling conflicted with the court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which gave each state the individual authority to regulate abortion.
In a similar case from 2024, the Supreme Court ruled against a lawsuit filed by The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM), a coalition of conservative medical organizations and physicians.
The lawsuit challenged FDA rules allowing expanded access to mifepristone, including mail delivery and telehealth prescriptions.
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