Over a year after Danco Laboratories, the manufacturer of the abortion pill, announced that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had given approval for retail pharmacies to sell the abortion pill, CVS and Walgreens have announced they will begin selling the lethal drugs within a month.
Shortly after the Danco announcement, both Walgreens Boot Alliance Inc and CVS Health Corp signaled their intent to receive certification so they could sell chemical abortions at their pharmacies. The decision was quickly condemned by pro-life groups. Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action, tweeted that it is “[d]isgusting that pharmacists will now be dispensing lethal poison alongside antibiotics and allergy medication,” later adding in a press release that “[t]his news is tragic not only for the innocent victims of abortion, but also for their mothers. The highest priority for the new pro-life majority in the U.S. House of Representatives must be to stop the deadly abortion pill and rein in the reckless Biden Administration and their lackeys in the FDA.”
Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, told the Washington Stand that CVS and Walgreens pharmacies will now become “akin to Planned Parenthood.”
Now, the New York Times has reported that the plans to dispense the pills used in chemical abortions are coming to fruition… and soon. Both CVS and Walgreens announced they had received their certifications from the FDA, and will begin dispensing the pills in a small number of states first before expanding.
Walgreens said they would begin in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California and Illinois to start.
“We are beginning a phased rollout in select locations to allow us to ensure quality, safety and privacy for our patients, providers and team members,” spokesperson Fraser Engerman said. CVS spokesperson Amy Thibault said they would dispense in Massachusetts and Rhode Island to start. Both said they would abide by laws in states where preborn children are protected from abortion. “[W]e continually monitor and evaluate changes in state laws and will dispense mifepristone in any state where it is or becomes legally permissible to do so,” Thibault said.
Attorneys general from 20 states issued a warning last year that distributing the abortion pill through the mail could violate state and federal laws, and that there could be legal consequences should CVS and Walgreens sell and ship abortion pills in this manner. The letter also warned about the dangers of the abortion pill regimen.
“Abortion pills are far riskier than surgical abortions, according to established scientific consensus: ‘Medication abortions were 5.96 times as likely to result in a complication as first-trimester aspiration abortion. Abortion pills carry the added risk that when these heightened complications invariably occur, women suffer those harms at home, away from medical help. And finally, mail-order abortion pills also invite the horror of an increase in coerced abortions,” the letter stated. “When abortion drugs are mailed or consumed outside a regulated medical facility, the risk of coercion is much higher — indeed, guaranteed — because there is no oversight.”
