In 2019, a couple in Nevada attempted to add to their family through IVF, but multiple mistakes made by CVS pharmacy caused the woman to lose her two preborn babies.
Timika Thomas and her husband had four children when they decided to try and have one more. After struggling to get pregnant, the couple turned to in vitro fertilization (IVF). [Editor’s Note: Live Action does not support the use of IVF. Read more about this here. However, we believe that all human beings, regardless of their means of conception, have human dignity and value, and are worthy of the right to life. This includes embryos who may die, be destroyed, or remain perpetually frozen as a result of reproductive technologies.]
After two eggs were inserted in her uterus, she was sent home with a medication — presumed to be progesterone, used by women undergoing IVF, which they inject into their buttocks. She would inject the progesterone, a naturally occurring pregnancy hormone, which would essentially make her body behave like it was already pregnant. Progesterone is often given to women to prevent miscarriage, and the idea was to hopefully help the embryos survive.
“You have to make yourself think it’s pregnant,” Thomas told the 8 News Now Investigators. “We’re taking a lot of supplements to make our bodies think it’s pregnant.” When she grew tired of the injections, her doctor prescribed a vaginal suppository of presumably progesterone to help. She went to CVS to pick it up. That’s when everything went wrong.
Thomas took two of the required doses and began cramping. It wasn’t ordinary cramping, however. “It was extreme. It was painful,” she explained.
Thomas searched the name of the drug and learned that she had been given misoprostol, which causes contractions and is sometimes given to a woman who has an incomplete miscarriage. It is also the second drug used in the two-drug abortion pill regimen.
“The first thing I read is it’s used for abortions,” Thomas said. Misoprostol is not just used in the abortion pill protocol (200mg dosage), but is also prescribed for other non-abortion-related indications, but in a different dosage — such as Cushing’s syndrome (300mg dosage). While mifepristone (the first drug in the abortion pill regimen) is under the FDA’s REMS safety protocols, misoprostol is not.
According to 8 News Now Investigators, two technicians and two pharmacists made a series of errors, which led to the loss of Thomas’ preborn children. One technician, wrongly believing she knew the generic name for the brand the doctor prescribed, entered the wrong drug name and a pharmacist did not catch the error. Then another pharmacist did not counsel Thomas when she picked up the medication.
“They just killed my baby,” she said to herself at the time. “Both my babies, because I transferred two embryos.”
She added that if someone had counseled her at the pharmacy, this error could have been prevented. “It [the error] would have been caught because then they would have had to have the medicine in their hand. And they would have said, ‘Oh, this is Misoprostol or Cytotec, have you taken this before?’ And I would have said ‘no.’ ”
Thomas filed a complaint with the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy, which met in September. The two pharmacists were fined and their licenses suspended. If both avoid disciplinary action over the next 12 months, pay fines, and take continuing education credits, their licenses will reinstated. CVS was fined $10,000.
CVS has publicly stated its plans to dispense the abortion pill regimen, telling Axios in January that it would “seek certification to dispense mifepristone where legally permissible.” It is unclear at this time, however, whether any brick-and-mortar pharmacies are dispensing the regimen.
“We’ve apologized to our patient for the prescription incident that occurred in 2019 and have cooperated with the Nevada Board of Pharmacy in this matter,” CVS said in a statement. “The health and well-being of our patients is our number one priority and we have comprehensive policies and procedures in place to support prescription safety. Prescription errors are very rare, but if one does occur, we take steps to learn from it in order to continuously improve quality and patient safety.”
Both pharmacists also apologized. One said, through tears, “It’s a human error. It was just a human error and I’m so sorry.”
But for Thomas, an apology won’t bring back her children. “All I got was a sorry. It will never be good enough.”
