Walgreens and CVS are gearing up to dispense the deadly abortion pill regimen after announcing to the New York Times that the pharmacy certification process with the pill’s manufacturers has been completed.
The move comes after a January 2023 announcement by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to roll back REMS safety regulations and allow retail pharmacies to dispense the abortion drug mifepristone (Mifeprex) after completing a certification process. Online, pro-lifers are threatening to boycott the drug chains.
Boycott Walgreens and CVS over abortion pill dispensing (Images: Twitter X)
SUMMARY
Walgreens: (Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., has about 8,700 U.S. stores)
- Certified by Danco (name brand U.S. manufacturer), seeking certification from the generic manufacturer GenBioPro
- Phased rollout in select locations: New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois
- The company said it would not identify which pharmacies would carry the drug “in the interest of pharmacist and patient safety.”
CVS: (CVS Health Corp. operates 9,400 locations)
- Certified by GenBioPro (generic U.S. manufacturer)
- Dispensing in all pharmacies in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
- Will expand to additional states, where allowed by law, on a rolling basis.
So @cvspharmacy and @Walgreens, who are paying $5 billion in a court settlement b/c of their despicable role in the opioid crisis, now want to profit from America's abortion crisis by becoming your neighborhood abortion drug dealers this month. https://t.co/RbvTx7SDeo
— Ryan Bomberger (@ryanbomberger) March 2, 2024
LOCATIONS
Walgreens and CVS will initially dispense the abortion pill in specific states and locations.
According to the New York Times, “Walgreens will start providing the pill within the next week in a small number of its pharmacies in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California and Illinois, said Fraser Engerman, a spokesman for the chain… CVS will begin dispensing in all of its pharmacies in Massachusetts and Rhode Island ‘in the weeks ahead,’ Amy Thibault, a spokeswoman for the company, said.”
“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,” Engerman said of Walgreens.
“Danco Laboratories, which manufactures mifepristone under the brand Mifeprex, said Walgreens will be dispensing its pill…” while “GenBioPro, maker of a generic version of mifepristone, said CVS will dispense its product,” the Washington Post claimed.
“We are also working with additional wholesalers to make Mifeprex available in certain certified pharmacies they service,” Abby Long, a Danco spokesperson, told Washington Post without naming the wholesalers.
“We commend CVS and their commitment to women’s health,” GenBioPro CEO Evan Masingill said in a statement to Washington Post.
CNN reported that “[b]oth pharmacy chains noted that they already dispense misoprostol, the other medication involved in medication abortion regimens.” (Misoprostol is a drug used to treat other conditions and is not used merely in conjunction with the abortion pill.)
Walgreens and CVS “will be monitoring the prospects in a few states, including Kansas, Montana and Wyoming, where abortion bans or strict limitations have been enacted but are enjoined because of legal challenges,” the New York Times wrote.
CERTIFICATION
The FDA’s Pharmacy Agreement for the abortion pill states, “Pharmacies must designate an authorized representative to carry out the certification process and oversee implementation and compliance with the Mifepristone REMS Program on behalf of the pharmacy. Healthcare settings, such as medical offices, clinics, and hospitals, where mifepristone will be dispensed by or under the supervision of a certified prescriber in the Mifepristone REMS Program do not require pharmacy certification.”
The pharmacy is required to, among other things:
- Report any patient deaths to the prescriber… and remind the prescriber of their obligation to report the deaths to Danco Laboratories, LLC.
- Not distribute, transfer, loan, or sell mifepristone except to certified prescribers or other locations of the pharmacy.
- Maintain records of Prescriber Agreement Forms, dispensing and shipping, and all processes and procedures including compliance with those processes and procedures.
- Maintain the identity of Mifeprex patients and prescribers as confidential and protected from disclosure except to the extent necessary for dispensing under this REMS or as necessary for payment and/or insurance.
- Train all relevant staff on the mifepristone REMS program requirements.
- Comply with audits carried out by the mifepristone sponsors or a third party acting on behalf of the mifepristone sponsors to ensure that all processes and procedures are in place and are being followed.
U.S. Manufacturers
The once highly secretive Danco Laboratories, LLC, is a sub-licensee of the eugenics-founded Population Council, which brought the deadly pill to the United States. Danco was seeded with $14.2 million in investment dollars from the pro-abortion David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
Recently, a DOJ False Claims Act settlement fined Danco just under $800,000, alleging that the company illegally withheld information about Mifeprex’s manufactured country of origin — which, according to Life Legal Defense Foundation’s release, was China at that time. But previously published research at Live Action News indicated that the abortion pill company is currently manufacturing the drug in Europe.
GenBioPro (GBP), located in Las Vegas, Nevada, and headed by President Evan Masingill, was approved as the generic drug maker by the FDA in 2019. GBP previously claimed to have captured a significant share of the nationwide market for mifepristone. And, just as the originally approved and highly secretive abortion pill manufacturer Danco Laboratories was started using investment dollars from the pro-abortion David and Lucile Packard Foundation, so GenBioPro has been funded by this abortion philanthropy group. In addition to Packard, the San Francisco-based Parsemus Foundation has been granting GenBioPro thousands in loan dollars.
In January of 2023, Danco had named American Mail Order Pharmacy (AMOP) and Manifest Pharmacy as the two mail order pharmacies they use to dispense the drugs, while GenBioPro had only named American Mail Order Pharmacy (AMOP) and Honeybee Health as its “currently Certified Pharmacies.”
But, last fall, GenBioPro began publishing names of certified retail pharmacies who agreed to be publicly named. Later, Danco confirmed to the media that they also certified many of the same pharmacies.
CONCERNS
Walgreens and CVS are — thus far — the two largest pharmacy chains to pivot away from medications for healing and toward using drugs to target the lives of preborn babies.
Live Action News previously reported glaring problems of understanding among pharmacists which have revealed that it is likely that some pharmacists may not be sufficiently knowledgeable to properly advise women of potential risks associated with abortion-inducing drugs and may have a lack of understanding surrounding the reporting of child sexual abuse.
Mistakes have and do happen in the dispensing of drugs. In Nevada, a woman recently claimed that CVS Pharmacy gave her the wrong drugs and then failed to properly counsel her about the pills. She tragically and unknowingly then took Cytotec (misoprostol — the second drug in the abortion pill regimen), causing the death of her preborn children.
Tragically, the abortion industry is already planning its next scheme to expand abortion pill access by suggesting pharmacists can prescribe the abortion pill, mifepristone.
NEXT STEPS
“Walgreens and CVS are unlikely to make much money by offering mifepristone, and the reaction from investors was muted. Walgreens’s share price rose 1 percent Friday, while CVS’s was down less than 1 percent,” the Washington Post reported Friday.
“The steps by CVS and Walgreens put pressure on other larger pharmacy operators, with Democratic lawmakers calling on them to seek the FDA’s certification to dispense mifepristone,” the Washington Post wrote. “Walmart, Costco, Kroger and Albertsons didn’t respond to requests for comment.”
Plaintiff doctors in an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court abortion pill case seeking to hold the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accountable against an alleged “unfettered power” believe the FDA failed to protect women when it moved to expand use of the approved abortion drug by removing the in-person requirement for obtaining the drug, among other issues. The case is set to be heard by the Court on March 26, 2024.
Abortion Pill Use Increases
Since 2000, the estimated number of women who have used the abortion pill mifepristone in the U.S. for “medical termination of pregnancy through the end of December 2022 is approximately 5.9 million women,” according to a recently published FDA report.
In addition to the increase in preborn babies targeted by chemical abortion, the FDA reports 32 deaths “associated with mifepristone” since its approval in 2000, but notes, “The adverse events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of concurrent use of other drugs, other medical or surgical treatments, co-existing medical conditions, and information gaps about patient health status and clinical management of the patient.”
Abortions by pill now make up the majority of all abortions committed in the United States — 53% in 2020 alone. And with the proliferation of unregulated online virtual abortion businesses, chemical abortion numbers are likely to grow. This number does not include abortion pills being shipped into the country illegally.
