All told, the country’s second-largest pharmacy chain will not sell mifepristone in brick-and-mortar stores in 20 states, including four without current abortion or abortion pill restrictions.
Abortion rights advocates said it appears the move was made under an abundance of caution and shows the complicated situation since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.
Making matters even more fraught is the possibility that a federal judge in Texas could decide to cut off access to the drug at any time.
“These companies are in a place right now where they can legitimately … say, there is a lot of chaos out here, we’re going to take a beat and see how things shake out for the foreseeable future before we spend any of our corporate resources certifying for something that … might be pulled off the market in a week’s time,” said Kirsten Moore, executive director of the Expanding Medication Abortion Access Project.
The decision from Walgreens comes after Republican state attorneys general in a letter last month threatened legal action if the company started distributing the drug. Included among them were four states — Alaska, Iowa, Kansas and Montana — where medication abortion remains legal due to court challenges.
In Kansas, for example, voters said the right to an abortion is protected by the state constitution. A state law prohibited anyone except a physician from dispensing mifepristone, but it has since been blocked in court.
Abortion is also legal in Montana, and the state’s requirement for a patient to have an in-person visit with a physician before being prescribed mifepristone is being challenged.
But Walgreens will refrain from dispensing the drug in those states, citing the complex legal situation.
The White House on Friday weighed in, and while not addressing the decision directly, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called efforts to dissuade the distribution of FDA-approved abortion medication “dangerous and just unacceptable.”
The GOP attorneys general indicated Walgreens and other pharmacies would be in violation of the Comstock Act, a nearly 150-year-old law originally written to stop anything that could “corrupt” morals from being sent in the mail.
“This is all part of a continued effort by anti-abortion extremists who want to use this arcane law to impose a backdoor ban on abortion,” Jean-Pierre said.
