Abortion Pills Will be Available with Prescription

Today, CVS and Walgreens announced that abortion drugs will be available by prescription in select states.

Walgreens announced that it will offer the pills in select pharmacies in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois. A CVS representative said that the company will be offering the pills in all of its pharmacies in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

“We are extremely disappointed that the two largest pharmacy chains in the United States are offering abortion drugs,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “Mifepristone, the first drug in the two-drug process, was developed to take the life of an unborn child and always has the potential to harm the mother.” 

Continued Tobias, “Sadly, this life-taking drug will now occupy space on shelves next to drugs created to help and not harm patients.”

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument this month regarding the Food and Drug Administration’s decisions in 2016 and 2021 to loosen regulations of the abortion drug mifepristone and whether the challengers have standing to bring their case.

“We hope the justices reconsider the approval of this dangerous drug combination or at the minimum reinstate long-standing safety protocols,” said Tobias. 

“The Biden Administration has promoted unlimited abortion until birth since the first day President Biden entered the White House,” said Tobias. “This administration has worked hand-in-hand with pro-abortion groups to make mifepristone widely available, regardless of the harm it can do to women and their preborn children.”

The consolidated cases the Supreme Court will hear are FDA, et al. v. Alliance Hippocratic Medicine, et al. and Danco Laboratories, L.L.C. v. Alliance Hippocratic Medicine, et al. 

Mifepristone is used in combination with misoprostol, a prostaglandin, to cause an abortion. Mifepristone blocks progesterone, leading to the death of the unborn baby, while the second drug, misoprostol, causes powerful, painful uterine contractions to expel the dead or dying baby.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the government agency that tracks the nation’s abortions, approximately 56% of all abortions are done using chemical abortion methods like mifepristone and misoprostol.

The FDA recently weakened the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) requirements for the drug combination to allow it to be dispensed and even mailed by pharmacies.

“Even the FDA admits that these drugs will fail or come with complications for a number of women. When hundreds of thousands of women take these pills, even a couple of percentage points of women hemorrhaging, dealing with infections, or ectopic pregnancy, means thousands of women desperately seeking emergency treatment, which may or may not be nearby,” said Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., director of Education and Research for National Right to Life.

In April 2023, National Right to Life released a white paper Addressing Many of the Myths the Media is Repeating about the FDA’s Approval and Management of Mifeprex (Mifepristone) which can be accessed here.

In September 2023, National Right to Life released a second white paper regarding What the Media Missed in Its Coverage of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Decision Regarding Mifepristone which addressed many of the issues that will be coming before the Court. That special report can be accessed here.

Founded in 1968, the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), the federation of affiliates in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia and more than 3,000 local chapters, is the nation’s oldest and largest grassroots pro-life organization. Recognized as the flagship of the pro-life movement, National Right to Life works through legislation and education to protect innocent human life from abortion, infanticide, assisted suicide and euthanasia.