The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a widely used abortion medication could continue to be prescribed by telehealth and sent to patients by mail.

Two manufacturers of mifepristone had asked the Supreme Court to intervene after the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit restricted access to the medication nationwide.

The Supreme Court’s brief order means that the Fifth Circuit’s decision will remain blocked, perhaps for months, while litigation continues in the lower courts. The issue could eventually return to the high court.

The majority did not explain the reasons for its ruling, as is often the case when it issues emergency orders. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., the two most conservative justices, dissented, with Justice Alito calling the majority’s order “remarkable” and complaining that it was “unreasoned.”....

Justice Alito, in his dissent, agreed with the state that its ban had been “thwarted by certain medical providers, private organizations and states that abhor laws like Louisiana’s and seek to undermine their enforcement.” He characterized the shipping of abortion medication into states with strict bans as the “perpetration of a scheme” to undercut the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which he noted “restored the right of each state to decide how to regulate abortions within its borders.”