Walgreens, CVS to Sell Abortion Drug at Certain Locations: ‘Testing the Waters,’ Experts Say

In January of 2023, Family Research Council, along with 13 other pro-life groups, sent a letter to Walgreens and CVS urging them to “cease dispensing abortion-inducing drugs.” FRC’s legislative affiliate, FRC Action, put out a petition that garnered over 51,000 signatures “calling on the two pharmacy chains to stop selling abortifacients in their pharmacies, to keep their pharmacy businesses, a pharmacy business — not an abortion business.”

The petition emphasized the concerns involved with these pharmacy giants trying to “turn … into abortion businesses.” It stated, “The neighborhood pharmacy has always stood as a place of healing, where human suffering can be alleviated thanks to the dedicated work of our local pharmacists. However, by selling the chemical abortion regimen, the local pharmacy will become a place of suffering and death.”

While the public outcry was significant, it took less than a year for Walgreens and CVS to resume their pro-abortion efforts once again.

On Friday, the two pharmacies announced plans to sell the abortion pill, mifepristone, in states that allow it. This was, in part, the result of a regulatory change issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last year that allowed retail pharmacies to sell the abortion drug if they had certification. Unsurprisingly, this recent decision was met with praise from abortion activists, including the Biden administration. In a statement from the White House, President Joe Biden said this was “an important milestone.”

The statement continued, “The stakes could not be higher for women across America. And in “the face of relentless attacks on reproductive freedom,” Biden encouraged “all pharmacies that want to pursue this option to seek certification.”

As The New York Times reported, “CVS is the nation’s largest chain with over 9,000 stores in all 50 states. Walgreens has about 8,500 stores in all states except North Dakota.” As such, experts are highlighting the immense impact this decision can have.

Katie Daniel, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America’s state policy director, described the policy as “reckless,” and she said, “As two of the world’s largest, most trusted ‘health’ brands, the decision by CVS and Walgreens to sell dangerous abortion drugs is shameful, and the harm to unborn babies and their mothers incalculable.”

Dr. Ingrid Skop, a board-certified OB-GYN and vice president of the pro-life research group Charlotte Lozier Institute, said, “By pushing these medically unsupervised abortions, the FDA and abortion advocates continue down the slippery slope of chipping away at medical standards for women seeking abortion. This is not health care.” Rather, she added, it’s “an ideology that prioritizes destruction of unborn human life and does not care that the women injured by these abortions, whom I see in the ER on a regular basis, are collateral damage.”

Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at FRC, commented to The Washington Stand, “Converting pharmacies into abortion facilities transforms these companies from places of healing and health that support life in all stages into facilities that kill children and place their mother’s lives in danger.” She continued, “Based on CDC data, about one in 25 patients will go to the ER after taking mifepristone. Furthermore, pharmacies are not equipped to evaluate if a woman is in a situation of intimate partner violence and is being forced to take the abortion drug mifepristone.”

But Szoch also emphasized that the problem goes beyond “the killing of countless babies,” because “Walgreens and CVS are [also] recklessly putting women’s lives in danger.” And she added that they should be held accountable for this. But considering that may not happen, she urged that “women who are injured by mifepristone should take action against CVS and Walgreens, pro-lifers should stand up and protest these companies, [and] state AGs should hold Walgreens and CVS legally liable for any violations of laws protecting the unborn in their state.”

On Monday, FRC President Tony Perkins posted on X:

“With this decision, Walgreens and [CVS] are thumbing their nose at their customers who want to protect life, which includes the thirteen pro-life orgs and 53,000 Americans who signed our letters last year urging the pharmacies not to become neighborhood abortion facilities.

“Don’t be fooled. Even though Walgreens & CVS will start dispensing mifepristone in only a handful of states, they are testing the waters. Take a stand for life. Make your voice heard. Take your business elsewhere. Don’t support these pharmacy chains that choose to dispense life-ending, women-harming abortion drugs.”

Szoch concluded, “Walgreens and CVS are forcing all of their employees to grapple with whether they are comfortable working for an abortion business. These pharmacies should revert to being places of healing — not places of death and destruction.”