CVS, Walgreens to begin selling abortion pills in select states, as legal challenges continue

Two of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains both announced plans to begin selling the abortion pill mifepristone in several states where abortion is legal in coming weeks. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration certified CVS and Walgreens to dispense the medication under new rules issued by the Biden administration last year.

• Walgreens expects to begin dispensing pills within a week, starting with New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California and Illinois. “Our goal is to gradually expand availability to all locations in all legally permissible states in a phased approach,” a company spokesperson said.
• CVS said it will begin filling prescriptions in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in coming weeks and will expand to additional states where abortion is legal “on a rolling basis.”

“With major retail pharmacy chains newly certified to dispense medication abortion, many women will soon have the option to pick up their prescription at a local, certified pharmacy –  just as they would for any other medication,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.

Mifepristone is part of a two-drug regimen that is used to end pregnancies up to 10 weeks of gestation. It is used in more than half of all abortions, the abortion-rights nonprofit Guttmacher Institute has said. CVS will carry generic mifepristone, made by drugmaker GenBioPro, and Walgreens will carry brand-name Mifeprex from drugmaker Danco.

During the pandemic, the FDA allowed mifepristone to be sent by mail-order pharmacies. Abortion-rights activists have pushed for the pill to also be available through physical pharmacies. After the regulatory shift last year, pharmacies had to seek certification from drugmakers to be able to dispense the pill in brick-and-mortar locations. Major pharmacy chains said early last year they would not yet sell the drugs in states where Republican attorneys general have threatened legal action or in states where abortion is legal but pharmacists’ ability to dispense the pills falls into a legal gray area.

Pro-life groups condemned the decisions by CVS and Walgreen to sell the drug. “This reckless policy was made possible by the Biden administration, which is pushing to turn every pharmacy and post office in America into an abortion center for the sake of abortion industry greed,” said Katie Daniel, state policy director for SBA Pro-Life America.

Related: Supreme Court agrees to hear ‘abortion pill access’ case (in election year)

The move comes just weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case that could prohibit brick-and-mortar pharmacies from dispensing the abortion pill. It is set to consider whether the FDA properly loosened restrictions around the pill. The court could decide to reinstate the pill’s original safeguards, which would then mean the pharmacies would have to stop dispensing it.