From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch.

A federal appeals court effectively tightens the dispensing rules on the abortion pill Mitha Pristone,

halting a 2023 regulation that let the drug be prescribed by mail without a doctor's visit.

But Justice Samuel Alito has already put a temporary pause on that lower court decision,

and there's no telling what the full Supreme Court might do next.

Welcome, I'm Kyle Peterson with the Wall Street Journal.

We're joined today by my colleagues on the W.J's opinion pages, Alicia Finley

and Sierra Don McLean. The debate over Mitha Pryston goes back years and by now includes piles of

litigation briefs and rulings. But the latest on Friday was from the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, a unanimous panel, three-judge

panel opinion by Judge Stewart, Kyle Duncan, staying a 2023 regulation that formalized a COVID-era

relaxation of the Mitha-Pristone dispensing rules. Alicia, what do you make of this ruling and the legal merits of the case?

This is different than the case that went up to the Supreme Court a couple of years ago.

Challengings impart some of the same restrictions or easing of the restrictions.

And just to clarify, what happened a couple years ago was you had some

pro-life groups and physicians challenged the FDA's one authorization of the drug, which goes back

to 2000, and to easing of regulations on its dispensing first in 2016, and then again in 2021, in response to the

COVID pandemic, and the judge's ruling then, in the 2023 changes essentially formalized

those that were in 2021. And those changes were to allow women to access or get the abortion pill

by telemedicine. So they didn't have to be in person. They didn't have to pick up the drug

and have a pharmacist and a doctor counsel them how to take that, et cetera, et cetera.

You get it essentially virtually or online. And now this case that is before the court today is simply challenging this 2023 kind of regulatory codification of the 2021 easing of the restrictions.

Now, they're not challenged in the 2016 easing the restrictions of which ease, like, who could actually prescribe the drug,

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