By Anjali Nayak
Two of the largest pharmacy chains in the United States have announced that they will start dispensing the abortion pill mifepristone this month, thus providing more access for some patients. Officials at CVS and Walgreens said in interviews on March 2, 2024, that they had received certification to dispense mifepristone under guidelines that the Food and Drug Administration issued last year. The chains plan to make the medication available in stores in a handful of states at first. They will not be providing the medications by mail.
Both chains said they would gradually expand to all other states where abortion was legal and where pharmacies were legally able to dispense abortion pills—about half of the states. President Biden said in a statement on Friday that the availability of the pill at pharmacies was “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.”
Walgreens will begin dispensing the pill at some of its stores in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois within a week, a spokesman 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,” the Walgreens statement read. This expands access to abortion at a time when many states are further restricting a path to the procedure. Last year, the FDA passed a rule that allows pharmacies to fill prescriptions for abortion pills. Before the rule change was finalized, pregnant people had to get the drug straight from their doctors or by mail via telehealth consultations.
This new decision by both CVS and Walgreens represents a huge turning point in how the United States government will interact with the larger corporations that handle day-to-day necessities that largely impact the lives and well-being of their citizens. Though many Republicans will feel that this is not a good decision, and want to restrict birth control as well as abortion access, it would call for large government overreach into the big pharma economy.