By Deidre McPhillips, CNN
(CNN) — Like on many other days, the last thing Leah Coplon did before she left work Friday was to check a litigation tracker. Coplon, the director of clinical operations for Abortion on Demand, was watching for any updates about legal action on abortion pills. Around 5 p.m., it was quiet.
Coplon made a short commute to downtown Portland, Maine, to attend a May Day rally. She had just arrived when she got the news.
The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals had blocked access by telemedicine or mail to mifepristone, one of the pills used in a standard regimen for medication abortion that has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for decades.
Abortion providers have long been preparing for potential restrictions on telehealth abortion, but whiplash from the court ruling that landed late Friday and another that followed Monday morning challenged even some of the best-laid plans.
Providers whom CNN talked to describe the time between the court actions as some of the “craziest” and most “chaotic” days they’ve had.
In an appeal Saturday, Danco Laboratories, a maker of the mifepristone pill, said the Friday decision “injects immediate confusion and upheaval into highly time-sensitive medical decisions.”
The lower court decision was put on temporary hold by the Supreme Court on Monday morning, once again making it legal for patients to receive mifepristone in the mail. That reprieve lasts until May 11 as the high court reviews emergency appeals.
“Because of past threats to mifepristone access, we have been prepared. We had many things lined up already so that we were able to switch rapidly,” Coplon said of Friday’s decision to limit access. “I would say that we were surprised but prepared.”
Logistical plans were quickly put into action for Abortion on Demand and other providers. But some say there’s only so much preparation that can be done.
“On the one hand, we can war-game things out. We’ve definitely been thinking about different scenarios,” said Dr. Angel Foster, co-founder of the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, known as The MAP. “Even with all of that planning, it was still a very chaotic weekend, and a lot of that has to do with the uncertainty that our patients felt.”
Ready for the logistics, not the tears
The phone lines for Her Safe Harbor, a reproductive health clinic in Delaware that also offers telehealth abortion, are open 24/7. But by 7:30 Saturday morning, the clinic had tripled the amount of staff manning the phones — and the need for the extra support hasn’t let up since.
“We had the logistics covered with the extra staff, the extra meds, the printouts,” said Debra Lynch, a nurse practitioner with Her Safe Harbor. “What we were not prepared for was the massive emotional response it was going to have with the patients.”
Many women were sobbing when they called, and it would take staffers a few minutes to even figure out the source of their distress, Lynch said.
“Everybody was taking phone calls from absolutely distraught women who thought that their options had ended, that their lives as they knew it were over,” she said. “It was a lot of counseling and emotional support. It was overwhelming.”
On Saturday night, just before “everybody in all of Massachusetts” was preparing to watch the Boston Celtics play in the NBA playoffs, Foster from The MAP was on the phone with the state attorney general’s office to work through the implications of the circuit court ruling.
“It’s a little bit of a scramble. There are a lot of things that are unknown, and we’re trying to figure out next steps,” Foster said. “For us, the priority has really just been patient care.
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