The last time the Supreme Court threatened to end access to the country’s most popular abortion method, California’s network of online providers and their pharmaceutical suppliers scrambled to respond.

Now, with the fate of the cocktail used in roughly two-thirds of U.S. terminations once again in the balance, they’re not even breaking a sweat.

Dr. Michele Gomez, co-founder of the MYA Network, a consortium of virtual reproductive healthcare providers, said the supply chain is “ready to switch in a day” to an alternative drug combination.

“It’s not going away and it’s not going to slow down,” Gomez said.

On May 1, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to block the drug mifepristone from being prescribed virtually and shipped through the mail, making such deliveries illegal across the country. On Monday, the Supreme Court stayed that decision, allowing prescriptions to resume until the court issues an emergency ruling next week.

Mifepristone is the first half of a two-drug protocol for medication abortion, which made up 63% of all legal abortions in the U.S. in 2023.

Between a quarter and a third of those abortion drugs are now prescribed by healthcare providers over the internet and delivered by mail — a path Louisiana and other ban states are fighting to bar.

“Abortion access has gone up with all the telehealth providers,” Gomez said. “We uncovered an unmet need.”

But the cocktail’s second ingredient, misoprostol, can be used to produce abortion on its own — a method that’s often more painful and slightly less effective.

It would be easy for suppliers to switch to a misoprostol-only protocol — and much harder for courts to block it, experts said.

“We heard about this on Friday and organizations that mail pills were mailing misoprostol on Saturday,” Gomez said. “They already knew what to do.”

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022, California became one of the first states to enshrine abortion rights for residents in its Constitution and legislate protection for clinicians who prescribe abortion pills to women in states with bans.

Last fall, legislators in Sacramento expanded those protections by allowing pills to be mailed without either the doctor or the patient’s name attached.

But cases like the one being decided next week could still sharply limit abortion rights even in states with extensive legal protections, experts warned.

“Even though California has built a fortress around its own constitutional protections of reproductive freedom, those [protections] become vulnerable to the whims of antiabortion states if the Supreme Court gives those states their imprimatur,” said Michele Goodwin, professor at Georgetown Law and an expert on reproductive justice.

Legal experts are split over how the justices will decide the medication’s mail-order fate.

“This is a case where law clearly won’t matter,” said Eric J. Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University and an expert on the Supreme Court.

“In a very important midterm election year, I think there’s at least two Republicans on the court who will decide that upholding the 5th Circuit would really hurt the Republicans at the polls,” he said. “If women can’t get this by mail in California or other blue states where abortion is legal, it’s going to have devastating consequences, and I think the court knows that.”

But he and others believe it’s no longer a matter of if — but when and how — the drugs are restricted, including in California.

“This is curating a backdrop for a legal showdown that may surely come,” Goodwin said.

The court’s most conservative justices could find grounds to act in the long-forgotten Comstock Act of 1873. The brainchild of America’s zealously anti-porn postmaster Anthony Comstock, the law not only banned the mailing of the “Birth of Venus” and “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” but also condoms, diaphragms and any drug, tool or text that could be used to produce an abortion.

Though it hasn’t been enforced since the 1970s, the antiabortion provision of the law remains on the books, experts said.

“The next move is with the Comstock Act, which Justices Alito and Thomas have already been hinting at,” Goodwin said. “In that case, it’s like playing Monopoly — we could skip mifepristone and go straight to contraception. The goal is to make sure none of that gets to be in the mail.”

That move would upend how Americans get both abortions and birth control, and put an unassuming L.A. County pharmacy squarely in the government’s crosshairs.

Although doctors in nearly two dozen states can safely prescribe medication abortion to women anywhere in the U.S., only a handful of specialty pharmacies actually fill those mail orders, Gomez explained. Among the largest is Honeybee in Culver City, which did not reply to requests for comment.

Even if the justices don’t reach for Comstock, a decision in Louisiana’s favor next week could create a two-tiered system of abortion across California and other blue states, experts said.

“The people this case hurts the most are the poor and the rural,” said Segall, the Supreme Court expert.

National data show that abortion patients are disproportionately poor. Most are also already mothers. Losing mail access to mifepristone would leave many with the more painful, less effective option while those with the time and means to reach a clinic continue to get the gold standard of care.

“There are fundamental questions of citizenship at the heart of this,” said Goodwin, the constitutional scholar. “Under the 14th Amendment, women are supposed to have equality, citizenship, liberty. It’s as though the Supreme Court has taken a black marker and pressed it against all of those words.”

For Gomez and other providers, that’s tomorrow’s problem.

“The lawyers and the politicians are just going to do their thing,” the doctor said. “The healthcare providers are just trying to get medications to people who need them.”

If negotiations with Iran collapse, the U.S. likely is to move quickly to degrade Tehran’s military capabilities — a campaign analysts say would begin with missile systems, naval assets and command networks before escalating to more controversial targets.

Negotiators are still working toward what officials describe as a preliminary framework agreement — effectively a one-page starting point for broader talks centered on Iran’s nuclear program and potential sanctions relief. But deep mistrust on both sides has left the process fragile, raising the stakes if diplomacy fails. 

“We’re not starting at zero,” retired Army Col. Seth Krummrich, a former Joint Staff planner and current Vice President at Global Guardian, told Fox News Digital. “We’re both starting at minus 1,000 because neither side trusts each other at all. This is going to be a pretty hard process going forward.” 

That tension was on display Thursday, when a senior U.S. official confirmed American forces struck Iran’s Qeshm port and Bandar Abbas — key locations near the Strait of Hormuz — while insisting the operation did not mark a restart of the war or the end of the ceasefire.

The strike on one of Iran’s oil ports came two days after Iran launched 15 ballistic and cruise missiles at the UAE’s Fujairah Port, drawing anger from Gulf allies. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine said earlier this week the attack did not rise to the level of breaking the ceasefire, describing it as a low-level strike.

President Donald Trump repeatedly has warned that if negotiations collapse, the U.S. could resume bombing Iran — even signaling before the recent ceasefire was implemented that Washington could target the country’s energy infrastructure and key economic assets. But any escalation would likely unfold in phases, beginning with efforts to dismantle Iran’s ability to project force across the region before expanding to more controversial targets.

If talks break down, any renewed conflict would likely become a “contest for escalation control,” where Iran seeks to impose costs without provoking regime-threatening retaliation while the U.S. works to strip away Tehran’s remaining leverage, according to retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula.

“The capabilities that would come into focus are the ones Iran uses to generate coercive leverage: ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, air defense systems, maritime strike assets, command-and-control networks, IRGC infrastructure, proxy support channels, and nuclear-related facilities,” he said, referring to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. 

“The military objective would be less about punishment and more about denying Iran the tools it uses to escalate,” he said. 

“President Trump has all the cards, and he wisely keeps all options on the table to ensure that Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon,” White House spokesperson Olivia Wales told Fox News Digital. The Pentagon could not immediately be reached for comment. 

One early focus could be Iran’s fleet of fast attack boats in the Strait of Hormuz — a central component of Tehran’s ability to threaten global shipping in one of the world’s most critical energy corridors.

RP Newman, a military and terrorism analyst and Marine Corp veteran, said leaving much of that fleet intact during earlier strikes was a mistake.

IRAN’S REMAINING WEAPONS: HOW TEHRAN CAN STILL DISRUPT THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ

“We’ve blown up six of them,” he said. “They’ve got about 400 left.” 

The small, fast-moving boats are a key part of Iran’s asymmetric maritime strategy, capable of harassing commercial tankers and U.S. naval forces — and could quickly become a priority target in any renewed campaign.

Much of Iran’s core military structure also remains intact.

INSIDE IRAN’S MILITARY: MISSILES, MILITIAS AND A FORCE BUILT FOR SURVIVAL

Newman said “we’ve only killed less than one percent of IRGC troops,” leaving a large portion of the force still capable of carrying out operations. He estimated the group “numbers between 150 and 190,000.”

But targeting the IRGC is far more complex than eliminating senior leadership.

“They’re not just a group of leaders at the top that you can kill away,” Krummrich said. “Over 47 years it’s percolated down to every level.”

Retired Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies policy institute, said Washington may continue tightening economic pressure before broadening military action, arguing the U.S. should “squeeze them for at least another three to six weeks” before considering more aggressive escalation.

“You could have blown Kharg Island back to smithereens,” Krummrich said, referring to Iran’s primary oil export terminal in the Persian Gulf. “But what the planner said was, no — what we can do is a maritime blockade. It will have the same effect.”

Iran has continued moving crude through covert shipping networks and ship-to-ship transfers, with tanker trackers reporting millions of barrels still reaching markets in recent weeks.

A CIA analysis found Iran may be able to sustain those pressures for another three to four months before facing more severe economic strain, according to a report by The Washington Post.

The question is how far a U.S. campaign could expand if initial pressure fails to force concessions.

Trump has signaled a willingness to go further, warning before the ceasefire that the U.S. could “completely obliterate” Iran’s electric generating plants, oil infrastructure and key export hubs such as Kharg Island if a deal is not reached.

“You don’t do that at first,” Montgomery said, describing strikes on dual-use infrastructure as a conditional step dependent on Iran’s response.

Targeting dual-use infrastructure presents significant legal and operational challenges.

“I’ve got 500 people standing on my target. You can’t hit that,” Newman said.

Such decisions carry political and legal risks, particularly given the likelihood of international scrutiny.

Broader infrastructure strikes also could create long-term instability if they push Iran toward internal collapse.

“In the short term, it might help. But in the long term, we’re all going to have to deal with it,” Krummrich said. “Once you pull that lever, you’re basically pushing Iran closer to the edge of the abyss.”

A collapse of state authority could create a failed-state scenario across the Strait of Hormuz, with armed groups, drones and missiles operating unchecked in one of the world’s most strategically important waterways.

Even some of the most discussed military options — such as seizing Iran’s highly enriched uranium — would be extremely difficult to execute.

“That’s much harder than it sounds,” said Montgomery.

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Such a mission would likely take months, and require engineers, technicians and heavy excavation equipment, in addition to thousands of U.S. operators providing continuous air coverage.

“When you start to stack that up, that becomes resource intensive and high risk — not even high, extreme risk,” said Krummrich.