The nation’s second-largest retail pharmacy will not sell the abortion-inducing medication mifepristone even in states where abortion is still legal.
The major chain is walking on eggshells amid growing pressure from anti-abortion policy makers and activists to not carry the drug, which, in combination with misoprostal, can safely and effectively end a pregnancy within the first 10 weeks.
Walgreens responded to a letter sent last month by nearly two dozen Republican state attorneys general threatening legal action against the company if it stocked the medications. In response, Walgreens said it would not dispense abortion pills either by mail or at brick-and-mortar stores in those states.
But some of the states that will be affected have not made abortion illegal. Walgreens pharmacies in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Montana ― states where abortion pills are currently legal ― will not stock them.
The Walgreens news comes just a couple of months after the Biden Administration updated a regulation to allow mifepristone, part of a two-drug cocktail to induce miscarriage, to be stocked and dispensed at pharmacies to pregnant people with a prescription.
Medication-induced abortion has been a lifeline for women in blue states and even red states since the Supreme Court eliminated the federal guarantee to an abortion. A lawsuit in Texas imperils legal access though, as anti-abortion activists seek to reverse FDA approval of the drug
In a response to Kris Kobach, Attorney General of Kansas, Danielle C. Gray on Walgreens’ legal team said: ‘As you know, to become certified by the FDA, participating pharmacies must satisfy a range of safety and risk mitigation requirements to dispense this drug.
‘At this time, we are working through the certification process, which includes the evaluation of our pharmacy network to determine where we will dispense Mifepristone and training protocols and updates for our pharmacists.’
GOP attorneys also sent letters to CVS, Rite Aid, Albertsons, Costco, Kroger and Walmart.
Walgreens’ decision to hold off on stocking and dispensing mifepristone until obtaining certification to do so constitutes yet another hurdle millions of women currently and will continue to face in pursuit of a safe abortion.
Mifepristone’s future is tenuous at best. A february lawsuit filed in Texas by a cadre of anti-abortion activists is challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of mifepristone. The judge in that case is a devout conservative and Donald Trump appointee named Matthew Kacsmaryk.
A ruling from Judge Kacsmaryk could come any day now. Siding with the plaintiffs would significantly disrupt abortion access nationwide. While a ruling in favor of the anti-abortion groups would be appealed immediately, if it were allowed to stand even states where the procedure is legal would be affected.
The FDA in recent years has loosened restrictions on the abortion-inducing medication combination of mifepristone and misoprostol driven by the pandemic. First the first time ever, women are able to get prescribed the pills via telemedicine and receive them in the mail.
Per the Justice Department, the U.S. Postal Service can legally deliver abortion pills to people in states where the procedure is banned or restricted, saying that federal law allows the mailing of the pills because there is no way for the sender to know for certain whether the recipient would use them illegally.
Medication abortion has become the most commonly used method for terminating a pregnancy. In 2020, the two-drug cocktail accounted for 54 percent of all abortions in the US, up from roughly 44 percent in 2019. This is in part due to the rise of telemedicine and a general preference to stay away from doctors’ offices during the pandemic.
The legal landscape for abortion has been in near-constant flux since the Supreme Court issued a fatal blow to legal access to abortion in the June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Abortion-rights advocates in blue states as well as states with bans in place have been able to take solace in the fact that mifepristone, a medication that has been proven safer than carrying a pregnancy to term, will always be available with the input of a doctor.
But the lawsuit in Texas, in addition to growing pressure like what GOP attorneys are displaying here, severely imperils access to the drug. For many women living in red states who want to terminate their pregnancy for whatever reason, such as from instances of rape and incest to financial insecurity, the abortion medication is their only option.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk