(CN) — Pharmacy giants Walgreens and CVS announced Friday that they will soon begin selling mifepristone, a medication used to facilitate early term abortions, in select locations across the U.S.
Walgreens plans to begin selling the medication "within a week," the company's Senior Media Relations Director Fraser Engerman told Courthouse News in an email. Fraser said that only "select locations" in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California and Illinois will carry mifepristone at first, and was silent on details to expand the medication's availability.
"Our goals in identifying these locations were to meet patient demand and remain consistent with how we have provided access to other medications where a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy program is required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration," the company said in a public statement on its website.
Fraser deemed the plan a "phased rollout" meant to "ensure quality, safety and privacy for our patients, providers and team members."
CVS will have a more narrow rollout for the abortion pill. CVS Lead External Communications Director Amy Thibault said in an email that the pharmacy will begin filling mifepristone prescriptions in Massachusetts and Rhode Island "in the weeks ahead," and plans to extend availability "to additional states, where allowed by law, on a rolling basis."
Thibault added mifepristone would only be available by prescription, not sold over the counter, and that insurance coverage for the pills would vary by plan.
Both companies said they had already completed the FDA certification process needed to dispense mifepristone. Since 2000, the FDA has approved mifepristone, used in combination with a second drug called misoprostol, to induce non-invasive abortions up to ten weeks into a pregnancy.
But before last year, the administration did not allow the medication to be sold in retail pharmacies. It only changed stance in January 2023 in response to a 2017 federal lawsuit out of Hawaii known as Chelius v. Becerra.
The plaintiffs in Becerra, consisting primarily of abortion providers and represented by the ACLU, argued that the "unique and harmful restrictions the FDA imposes on where and how a patient may receive [mifepristone] deny women meaningful access to this safe and effective treatment with no medical justification."
After years of litigation, the FDA announced in December 2021 that it would modify its Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy for mifepristone. Two years of intermittent legal proceedings followed, along with internal review of applications to remove mifepristone's in-person dispensing requirement, which limited the drug's distribution to medical clinics, doctors' offices and hospitals.
The FDA finally announced new protocols for the drug in January 2023, under which the drug "can be dispensed by or under the supervision of a certified prescriber or by certified pharmacies on a prescription issued by a certified prescriber."
In plain English, this means patients can get the drug from a retail pharmacy so long as they have a valid prescription.
The White House issued a statement in support of the news on Friday, encouraging more pharmacies to begin carrying mifepristone.
"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 prepared statement. "I encourage all pharmacies that want to pursue this option to seek certification."
In a post-Roe v. Wade America, conservative-led states have moved swiftly to curtail abortion access, including by attacking access to mifepristone. The drug is at the center of an ongoing legal battle in federal court, with U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas pulling its FDA approval last April. Just hours later, U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice in Washington state rebuked Kacsmaryk by ruling to protect mifepristone's availability.
The Fifth Circuit partially overturned Kacsmaryk's ruling a week later, with the U.S. Supreme Court subsequently pausing any restrictions on the pills' availability pending further developments in the lower courts.
The spring legal fight over the abortion medication sparked such a political uproar that there was concern it could lead to a constitutional crisis. Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, for example, said last May that he would consider defying the Supreme Court if it ruled to curtail mifepristone access.
The Supreme Court agreed to review the issue in December, with oral arguments scheduled for March 26.
Follow @djbyrnes1
Subscribe to Closing Arguments
Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.
Additional Reads
-
-
Harm to Seaside wildlife June 14, 2024
