It might come as a surprise to many Wisconsinites to learn that more Wisconsin women are getting abortions today than were accessing abortion in the state four years ago, right before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

In large part, that’s because of the rise of telehealth abortion, with patients receiving prescription medication by mail and using it in the privacy of their own homes under remote supervision from a doctor. (Wisconsin law prohibits telehealth abortion, but shield laws in several less restrictive states protect providers there, so women here can access their care.) 

A chart created by University of Wisconsin researchers in the UW Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology’s Collaborative for Reproductive Equity (CORE) shows that abortion services at bricks-and-mortar clinics, which dropped to zero in Wisconsin immediately after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, have not quite reached pre-Dobbs levels. But the steady increase in telehealth abortion, which now accounts for about one-third of all abortions in the state, pushes the total number of abortions slightly above a May 2022 pre-Dobbs spike.

Everyone remembers the bomb that dropped on June 24, 2022 when the Dobbs decision came down. All abortion care ceased in Wisconsin for more than a year, as healthcare providers who worried they could be charged with a felony under an antiquated 1849 law stopped providing abortion services. One woman was refused care and left to bleed for 10 days while suffering an untreated, incomplete miscarriage. 

Voter backlash to that sudden, forced return to the gynecological Dark Ages helped propel the landslide election of a female, pro-choice majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Abortion services resumed in 2023 when a Dane County judge ruled that the 1849 law did not ban abortions. Then, finally, last summer the Court invalidated the 1849 law altogether. 

Abortion is not the central issue in the 2026 elections that it was in 2022. But in our tippy, polarized state, access to abortion could go either way. 

“There’s good news and bad news,” says Jenny Higgins, a professor in the UW’s OB-GYN department and the director of CORE. The good news is the rise in telemedicine abortion and the overall increase in abortion access in Wisconsin.

For a lot of women, telemedicine is considerably more appealing than the expense and stress of traveling long distances, running a gauntlet of protesters and paying hundreds of dollars out-of-pocket for in-person care that cannot be covered, under Wisconsin law, by Medicaid, public employee health insurance or Affordable Care Act plans. Telemed abortion is also cheap — as little as $5 on some sliding scale plans, Higgins says.

And there’s more good news: political momentum to defend abortion rights suggests that the many restrictions on abortion in Wisconsin could soon be legislated away — if voters stay activated.

“The bad news,” Higgins says, “is that abortion remains heavily, heavily restricted here, including with a telehealth ban, and so we don’t know how much longer shield laws will hold.”

A current case before the U.S. Supreme Court seeks to ban mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in combination for medication abortion. In addition to pressuring the Food and Drug Administration to rescind its longtime verdict that the drug is safe, anti-abortion groups and Republican state attorneys general are now trying to get the Environmental Protection Agency to ban mifepristone on the disingenuous grounds that it causes water pollution.

“We also don’t know the extent to which individuals will be criminalized for these things,” Higgins adds. There could be lawsuits against women in Wisconsin, as there have been in other states, “where people are bringing suits against folks who have ordered pills.”

All in all, “it’s an unsteady situation,” says Higgins.

It’s not clear how much abortion rights will motivate voters in the potentially life-changing elections this fall. 

“Abortion has been an unusually important issue in the decisions of voters in Wisconsin,” says Michael Wagner, a professor in the school of journalism and mass communications at the UW and the director of the Center for Communication and Civic Renewal, “especially in election cycles where voters can’t rely solely upon their partisanship to cast a ballot.” 

In the last three state Supreme Court races, Wagner notes, “abortion has been a huge issue in the advertising of the candidates, and since it has, the candidate that has won the election has been a pro-choice candidate, without fail, since Dobbs was before the court.”

In general, Wagner says, “the public has been quite supportive in Wisconsin of abortion rights,” including medication abortion. 

Four in 10 Republicans support legal abortion, along with 80% of Democrats. So Republicans are caught between their highly motivated anti-abortion base and a large group of voters who don’t favor outlawing abortion. 

Does that mean the Trump administration might hold off on banning medication abortion at the FDA or the EPA level, nodding to voter sentiment?

Don’t hold your breath.

“Almost every policy proposal the president has pursued in the second term is underwater in public opinion, and he hasn’t stopped pursuing most of them,” says Wagner.

Plus, Republican voters who don’t agree with the candidates on abortion aren’t necessarily abandoning them. “There hasn’t been a strong, stark trend that has lasted across four or five election cycles that leads me to think Republicans are, you know, committing malpractice politically if they don’t soften their view on abortion,” Wagner says. “I don’t think there’s evidence for that kind of conclusion.”

Maybe the silver lining of the Trump/Dobbs era is that the federal government is no longer the major player when it comes to protecting abortion rights.

“The governor’s race, the control of the state Legislature, state Supreme Court races, these are now the races that will determine whether abortion is legal in Wisconsin,” says Wagner.

“I think it’s going to be a big issue. It’s one of the things where Democrats can say, especially in the state, ‘Put us in charge and we can codify some things.’ You know, that’s something that they really can do in this particular election that they could not have done in prior elections, and so I wouldn’t be surprised to see it become a bigger issue, but I think it depends upon who the nominee ends up being for the Democrats for governor, especially.”

Higgins is optimistic. 

“While we’re seeing increases in abortion numbers, abortion is still highly, highly constrained in our state, and it doesn’t have to be that way,” she says. It was only after the 2010 election, when Republicans won control of the entire state government and cemented their power by passing gerrymandered voting maps, that Wisconsin began heavily restricting abortion access. 

“We have the ability to change that,” Higgins says. “Wisconsin was once considered as recently as 2009 a supportive place for abortion access. We have the ability to get back there.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday extended a highly anticipated stay blocking an appellate court’s pause on telehealth abortion access until May 14.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approved medication-abortion regimen remains available via telehealth until then, following a week of uncertainty among abortion patients and providers.

“With this critical temporary administrative stay extended, we hope that some of the chaos and confusion inflicted on patients and providers last weekend will be abated,” said Evan Masingill, CEO of abortion-pill manufacturer GenBioPro, one of the defendants in the case, in a statement.

On May 4, the Supreme Court temporarily stayed the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling to reinstate the FDA’s in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone that the Biden administration officially lifted in 2023. Over the past week, several doctors groups submitted friend-of-the-court briefs arguing that cutting off access to mifepristone could harm many women seeking abortions and miscarriage management. Republican attorneys general from 23 states, meanwhile, urged the Supreme Court not to allow providers to send mifepristone through the mail. 

People in states with abortion bans or diminished abortion access continue to depend on abortion providers prescribing FDA’s approved mifepristone-misoprostol regimen through telemedicine and sending it to patients by mail.

According to new preliminary findings from the Society of Family Planning, telehealth abortion comprised 28% of all abortions at the end of 2025, an increase from 25% at the end of 2024.

Attorneys representing Louisiana have argued that in addition to undermining a state abortion ban, the federal rulemaking process allowing telehealth prescriptions of medication abortion was flawed.  

University of Michigan law professor Samuel Bagenstos, who served as general counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services at the time the Biden-era rule was implemented, said the policy was well considered and based on evidence. 

“The 2023 update was the result of an incredibly careful, deliberate, time-consuming, painstaking process to make sure that they were following what the evidence was,” Bagenstos said. If, the plaintiffs were to prevail, he added, ending telehealth access to mifepristone nationwide would have “really harmful effects on women across the country, as well as really destabilizing effects on the drug approval system.” 

Louisiana’s lawsuit against mifepristone has nationwide implications and could threaten residents in states with abortion access and so-called abortion shield laws, such as Maryland. 

Regardless of what happens in this case, abortion providers told Stateline they are determined to continue providing telehealth abortions, though potentially without mifepristone. Dr. Angel Foster, a telehealth provider in Massachusetts, a shield law state, said in the past week, about 100 patients have requested pills for future use, compared with 34 in the entire month of April. She said constantly changing rules around abortion access followed by sensational news headlines continue to create confusion for people seeking termination or miscarriage management.

“I live and breathe abortion at this point, and I find it can be hard to keep up with the ever-changing legal environment and the way that things are getting framed and phrased,” Foster said. “When you’re a patient and what you see are just the headlines, and you’ve got to figure out what it means for you, it’s really complicated.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the number of Republican attorneys general who asked the Supreme Court to keep mifepristone from being prescribed via telehealth visits. It should be 23. 

Stateline reporter Sofia Resnick can be reached at sresnick@stateline.org.

Advocates and opponents of abortion access say they’re wondering what happens next in a critical telehealth medication case that created chaos and confusion over the past week after an appeals court blocked nationwide access to the drug and, days later, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued a temporary stay.

Alito’s stay preserves telehealth access until May 11. But it’s unclear what happens next for patients and providers.

The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily blocked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ Friday ruling to suspend a federal rule allowing telehealth prescriptions of the drug mifepristone while the lawsuit Louisiana v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration unfolds. Abortion providers are determined to continue providing the service, though potentially without mifepristone, the drug at the center for the case, which has had a high record of safety and efficacy since 2000.

Anti-abortion advocates have pushed to reverse the 2023 policy, enacted under former Democratic President Joe Biden, that allowed the FDA to drop its requirement that a patient see a provider in person before the medication can be prescribed. One similar national case already failed unanimously before the Supreme Court, but anti-abortion advocates are hoping this time around, with a more tailored approach, they will be successful.

Abortion-rights advocates say they’re prepared for whatever might happen in the courts, with contingency plans and a message that abortion will still be available even if the particular medication — mifepristone — is not.

Has the abortion pill been banned?

No. Mifepristone is still a legally approved FDA drug commonly used to terminate a pregnancy before 10 weeks’ gestation and is used off-label to treat miscarriages.

Is telehealth abortion still legal?

Yes, for now. Under the U.S. Supreme Court’s administrative stay that expires on May 11, it is still legal to obtain abortion medication through telemedicine under the FDA’s regulations. Mifepristone is commonly used with a second drug, misoprostol, in medication abortions. The case doesn’t include misoprostol.

Who would be affected if telehealth access is struck down?

According to the Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount report, 27% of all abortions in the first six months of 2025 were obtained through telehealth, adding up to more than 162,000 cases.

Mifepristone is also used for patients experiencing a miscarriage; those patients also would have to visit a provider in person.

The ruling would apply nationwide, meaning that health providers couldn’t prescribe mifepristone without an in-person visit with the patient, even in states with abortion access.

What are the arguments on each side in Louisiana v. FDA?

Louisiana says the Biden-era policy undermines a state law banning abortion, and that the federal rulemaking process allowing telehealth prescriptions was flawed.

The Food and Drug Administration says the state doesn’t have standing to sue, but also notes that it’s taking more time to review the drug’s safety.

Two mifepristone drugmakers, meanwhile, have intervened on the FDA’s side.

What could happen next?

The Supreme Court has many options available moving forward, but a few options are most likely, said Katie Keith, founding director of the Center for Health Policy and the Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. The justices could extend the stay when it expires May 11, or the court could make a longer-term ruling.

That could mean sending it back to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with or without upholding the initial ruling blocking the 2023 provision while the appeals case proceeds. Or justices could decide to take up the case and bypass the rest of the 5th Circuit appeal.

If it did that, the manufacturer defendants Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro have asked for an expedited process with a decision by June. That seems unlikely, Keith said, but the court has conducted expedited cases related to abortion before, such as the Moyle v. United States case in 2024 related to the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.

What will providers do if they can’t use the combination of mifepristone and misoprostol?

Brittany Fonteno, president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation, said providers have been preparing since 2023 for the possibility of losing access to mifepristone. There have long been plans to switch to a misoprostol-only protocol, which is the main method of pregnancy termination across much of the world, she said.

“A lot of providers had created these policies and just needed to dust them off,” Fonteno said.

Dr. Angel Foster, co-founder of the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, which provides telehealth abortions to patients in all 50 states, said she and her team spent the weekend scrambling to contact patients waiting on medication abortion pills they had ordered before the ruling, and implementing a contingency plan that many abortion providers have been planning for since the lawsuits against mifepristone began in 2023.

That contingency involves pivoting from the FDA-approved mifepristone-misoprostol regimen to a misoprostol-only regimen.

Early Monday, Foster said her team was getting ready to ship misoprostol-only packages to patients at 2 p.m., but after the Supreme Court stayed the appeals court’s ruling on Monday morning, she said they were able to switch back to the mifepristone-misoprostol regimen.

Foster also said her organization was inundated with requests for pills that people could stockpile — people who didn’t need an abortion but were worried about losing access to the pills. Normally that’s a small fraction of the requests they receive, she said, but on Tuesday, they sent out more than had been sent in the entire month of April.

“Over the last two days, we’ve had a huge increase in the number of people from Louisiana requesting pills, especially pills for future use,” Foster said.

What are the pros and cons of the misoprostol-only regimen?

Dr. Maya Bass, a family physician in New Jersey who also provides abortions in Delaware, said misoprostol-only regimens are still safe and highly effective, but that the regimen has a lower efficacy rate than the combination of the two drugs and comes with potentially more side effects and risks.

Misoprostol-only regimens vary between 85% and 90% effective, while the combination is between 93% and 99% effective. The effective rates are lower as the gestational age increases.

The combination works well, Bass said, because mifepristone stops the hormone that allows the pregnancy to continue and signals to the body that the pregnancy is over. The misoprostol then helps soften the cervix and prompts the uterus to contract and expel the pregnancy tissue.

Without that hormonal signal, Bass said, a higher dose of misoprostol is needed to empty the uterus. The usual side effects of nausea, diarrhea, chills and sometimes fevers can be more severe because of the higher dosage. And it may lead to more people needing to seek in-person follow-up care to fully remove all of the pregnancy tissue, which can cause infection if it stays in the uterus.

“A lot of the people who are using telehealth for their medication abortion are not necessarily in places where they can safely access that care,” Bass said. “So it is concerning that we might be relying more on a regimen that means that many more people needing to seek care.”

What are the details of the legal arguments?

Louisiana officials, including Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill, argue that the state is harmed by the 2023 telehealth policy because it undermines a state law banning abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with few exceptions that don’t include rape or incest. The state also challenged the Food and Drug Administration’s process in deciding to eliminate the in-person dispensing requirement, saying it was based on flawed or nonexistent data.

The state also said the rule has resulted in $92,000 in Medicaid bills from two women who went to the emergency room because of complications related to mifepristone in 2025. And the state says the rule harmed the other plaintiff in the case, Louisiana resident Rosalie Markezich, who said her ex-boyfriend ordered the medication online and pressured her into taking it. That wouldn’t have been possible if the medication had to be dispensed through an in-person visit, the state argues.

“The priority of safety supersedes the priority of access, and that is what ultimately, I believe, needs to be looked at directly,” Sarah Zagorski, senior director of public relations at Americans United for Life, told Stateline on Wednesday. The anti-abortion organization submitted a brief supporting Louisiana’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court this week.

The FDA’s response has been to try to dismiss the claims in part on the grounds that Louisiana doesn’t have standing to sue, but agency officials have also said they are in the middle of conducting a safety review of mifepristone and need more time.

GenBioPro and Danco Laboratories, two of the manufacturers of mifepristone, intervened as defendants in the case, which can happen when the party that is sued may not be willing to fully defend the case for various reasons.

The two companies argue that Louisiana does not have proper standing to sue because the state does not prescribe or use mifepristone and is an “unregulated party” as it relates to the 2023 telehealth provision. They also noted that the FDA reviewed 15 studies evaluating medication abortion outcomes for more than 55,000 patients before approving the rule, “all of which supported the safety and effectiveness of dispensing mifepristone by mail, courier, or through pharmacies.”

How does this compare to the 2023 case Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA?

Both lawsuits were designed to restrict access to mifepristone. The plaintiffs in the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine case included a group of anti-abortion doctors who said they would be harmed by having to care for people who took mifepristone. They also argued that the FDA’s approval of the drug was improper.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was involved in that case as well, and determined that the FDA should roll back its decision to ease restrictions on the drug, including the 2023 telehealth rule. But the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided in June 2024 that the Alliance plaintiffs didn’t have proper standing and sent it back to the lower court.

After that ruling, the attorneys general of Missouri, Idaho and Kansas stepped in as plaintiffs, and the case was transferred to Missouri’s U.S. district court, where it’s still pending.

The Louisiana case is more limited because it would strike down one provision of mifepristone regulation, noted Jenna Hudson, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights. The Alliance plaintiffs sought to revoke the drug’s approval altogether.

Stateline reporters Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org and Sofia Resnick can be reached at sresnick@stateline.org.  

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a temporary stay on an appeals court ruling from Friday that was blocking remote access to an abortion drug, restoring access until at least May 11.

The administrative stay, issued by Justice Samuel Alito, pauses Friday’s decision by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling blocked a 2023 rule adopted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration allowing mifepristone, one of two drugs used to terminate a pregnancy before 10 weeks and to treat miscarriages, to be prescribed without an in-person visit with a health care provider and also allowed it to be mailed to recipients in states with abortion bans.

“The administrative stay is temporary, and I am confident life and law will win in the end,” said Louisiana Republican Attorney General Liz Murrill in a statement. 

Thirteen states have near-total abortion bans, including Louisiana. Murrill sued the FDA in October, saying the rule undermines the state’s laws and causes financial harm because the state paid $92,000 in Medicaid bills for two women who needed emergency care in 2025 from complications related to mifepristone. 

In the years since the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing states to regulate abortion access, telehealth prescriptions of abortion medication have become increasingly popular, with more than 27% of all abortions provided that way in 2025, according to data from the Society of Family Planning.

“While this is a positive short-term development, no one can rest easy when our ability to get this safe, effective medication for abortion and miscarriage care still hangs in the balance,” said Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney for the Reproductive Freedom Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, in a statement. “The Supreme Court needs to put an end to this baseless attack on our reproductive freedom, once and for all.”

The case could follow a similar pattern to one that played out in 2023, after U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Texas issued a ruling that would have revoked access to the abortion drug mifepristone altogether. 

The U.S. Supreme Court intervened shortly after that ruling and kept mifepristone available while the case proceeded in the 5th Circuit appeals court, which eventually decided that more restrictions were warranted, but not pulling the drug’s approval. The Supreme Court officially took the case several months later, and unanimously ruled in June 2024 that the plaintiffs suing the FDA did not have standing, keeping access to mifepristone intact.

Responses from the attorneys in the latest case are expected to be filed with the Supreme Court by Thursday, according to Alito’s order.

Stateline reporter Kelcie Moseley-Morris can be reached at kmoseley@stateline.org.