Walgreens, CVS To Start Dispensing Abortion Pill In Stores | EUROtoday

Two of the most important pharmacies within the United States introduced Friday that they are going to quickly begin meting out the abortion medicine mifepristone in choose shops.

CVS and Walgreens each confirmed Friday that they’ve accomplished the Food and Drug Administration’s certification course of to begin filling prescriptions for the drugs, which can be utilized to terminate some pregnancies within the first trimester and account for greater than half of abortions within the U.S.

Walgreens “expects to begin dispensing within a week, consistent with federal and state laws,” stated the pharmacy, which operates greater than 8,000 places throughout the nation. Its rollout will start in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois ― all states which have protected entry to abortion within the wake of Roe v. Wade falling in 2022.

CVS stated it’s beginning with a smaller rollout on a barely later timeline.

“We’ll begin filling prescriptions for the medication in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the weeks ahead and will expand to additional states, where allowed by law, on a rolling basis,” stated the corporate, which operates greater than 9,000 pharmacies nationwide.

The New York Times was the primary to report the information.

Neither pharmacy will supply mifepristone by mail. That observe has been a supply of debate in recent times, although a current research discovered that utilizing telehealth to acquire abortion drugs by means of the mail is as protected and efficient as seeing a physician in individual for a similar function.

President Joe Biden praised CVS and Walgreens for his or her bulletins Friday and inspired extra pharmacies to hunt the certification.

“Today is an important milestone in ensuring access to mifepristone, a drug that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as safe and effective for more than 20 years,” he stated in a press release. “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. I encourage all pharmacies that want to pursue this option to seek certification.”

More than a dozen states have efficiently outlawed abortion following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in 2022 eradicating federal protections for the process. Several different states are implementing bans on abortion after only a few weeks into being pregnant, leaving the process accessible in about simply of half of the states.

Mifepristone is one half of the two-drug mixture normally utilized in medicine abortions, together with misoprostol. But mifepristone has been focused extra intensely for restriction, and even in states the place mifepristone stays authorized, political maneuvering has stymied entry.

After Walgreens introduced final yr that it could search certification to promote it in pharmacies, a bunch of 20 attorneys common from conservative states threatened authorized motion towards the pharmacy in the event that they proceeded with distribution of their states. That included 4 states the place mifepristone is authorized: Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Montana.

Walgreens acquiesced to the risk, with a spokesperson calling the matter “a very complex and in flux area of the law.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) chastised Walgreens for bowing to the stress and canceled a a $54 million contract with the corporate.