a supreme court Showdown is on the horizon after a federal appeals court on Wednesday issued a ruling on the abortion medication pill mifiperstone the court says the drug should remain legal in the U.S for now but with significant restrictions the Food and Drug Administration approved mifiperstone 23 years ago and today it's widely used medication abortions account for about half of all abortions in the U.S the fifth circuit ruled that actions the FDA took to make the pill more broadly available to pregnant people were illegal if upheld the decision would ban the abortion pill from being obtained through telemedicine appointments and by mail patients would also have to get a prescription from a doctor and have three follow-up appointments this ruling is on pause though until the Supreme Court makes a decision on the case for more on what this means even in States like New Jersey where abortion remains legal I'm joined Now by Rutgers Camden small Professor Kim mutcherson Professor mutterson always good to have your voice on this so I think the important thing to note here right is that everything remains status quo for now but what does change if anything in the immediate before The Supreme Court intervenes nothing um and that again is the most important message for people to get at this point um you know all everything that's happening in this case so far is all prelim preliminary um it's all procedural and it's all trying to figure out what is going to happen to access to mipopristone while there's a trial going on to actually get to the merits of this case so we're we're still in the beginning stages um and the stay that the Supreme Court issued when when we had got the initial decisions in this case that last spring I guess late winter early spring that stay is still in place and what the Supreme Court said then was everything about methopristone is going to stay exactly the same during the pendency of these proceedings unless and until the Supreme Court gets the case in front of it so um the justice department is going to appeal what the fifth circuit did it'll go back to the Supreme Court the Supreme Court will probably just say the stand remains in place and then we'll go all the way back down to the dish record and actually have a trial on the merits on this thing I mean this is the same Supreme Court though that overturned row what can we expect or what do you expect as someone with a lot of expertise in this area to come from this court to come from these justices I think what we can expect is that the majority of the Court will want the stay to remain in place and that we might have a few dissents from that order that would not be surprising to me um but I do think that there is some sense and this is maybe me giving too much credit to the justices but I'm going to keep trying um you know I do have some sense that the the turmoil that would be created by deciding that either mifepristone cannot be on the market anymore that would be huge right it's been on the market since 2000 um or rolling back the changes that the FDA has made to how if a person gets distributed since 2016. that would also be a big deal so just to give you a sense of what that would mean um you know if we if we took the fifth circuit's opinion and we went back and said any of the changes made post 2016 are not going to be effect in effect anymore well now you have to do to go to three doctor's appointments right and you have to physically be in the space because you can no longer dispense through Telehealth um it requires it rolls back the number of weeks of pregnancy where somebody can use medication abortion it rolls back who can prescribe medication abortion so now it would be only Physicians and on other people who have prescribing power so that whatever happens that would be a lot so keeping things as status quo is quite frankly what makes sense at this point and so I think that's what the Supreme Court will do and it certainly is what they should do and just remind us quickly if you can there was also a lawsuit brought by a group of Democrats regarding Memphis person where does that stand and where is it headed so we're on a little bit of a collision course and a collision course is kind of a good thing in some ways when you're talking about cases like this because a collision course normally is what takes you up to the Supreme Court um and what we had in the other case was a court that made a completely different decision um from what the fifth circuit did and from what the district court did um um in this particular case and so on one hand we have a court that's saying nifa christone is totally fine and what the FDA did to approve it is totally fine and then we have the district court and the fifth circuit um um saying no no no no we need to roll back at least some of what the FDA has done and so normally when you have that kind of split in the circuits that is what sends a case up to the U.S Supreme Court um this court as you suggested has not been friendly at all to abortion access and to abortion rights at least the majority of the court so if if this case does finally get to the Supreme Court on the merits I have some concerns about how that might turn out Rutgers Camden law professor Kim mutcherson thanks so much thank you