Justice Samuel Alito sat in his Washington chambers on Monday as he issued a temporary stay that restores sanity to the distribution of life-altering chemicals. The order pauses a previous decision that would have forced the Food and Drug Administration to allow the abortion pill, mifepristone, to be sent through the mail without an in-person doctor’s visit. This administrative pause will remain in effect until at least 5 p.m. on May 11 according to court filings. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had previously warned that the state of Louisiana was likely to win its challenge against the drug’s widespread distribution.

The physical reality of this struggle involves a small white tablet that has become a tool of convenience at the cost of the unborn. Louisiana officials argued in their filing that dispensing the drug through the mail ignores the threat of sepsis and hemorrhaging to the mother. They noted that the state’s ability to enforce its own laws is harmed when chemicals intended to end life are shipped across borders like common parcels. Justice Alito has given the state until Thursday to formally respond to the requests from drugmakers Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro to keep the mail-order system active.

This paper views the mail-order scheme as a dangerous enclosure of medical authority that bypasses the sacred duty of the physician to protect life. By removing the requirement for an in-person exam, the state effectively abandons the mother to a lonely and often traumatic process. Danco told the court that the challenge should be rejected based on past precedents, yet the moral stakes have only risen as telehealth becomes a mask for the industrialization of abortion.

"Louisiana is likely to win its challenge," the 5th Circuit Court stated in its May 1 ruling. For now, the ticking clock of the court offers a brief reprieve for those who believe that medicine should heal, not harm. The heavy mahogany of the bench and the black silk of the robes represent a tradition that must stand against the reckless speed of modern social experiments.