A container containing boxes of mifepristone, the first drug in medical abortion, is prepared for patients at the Alamo Women's Clinic in Carbondale, Illinois, on April 20, 2023.
Evelyn Hochstein | Reuters
CVS And Walgreens The company will begin selling the abortion pill mifepristone this month at some pharmacy locations in states where it is legal, spokespeople for both companies told CNBC on Friday.
CVS and Walgreens have received certification from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to distribute commonly used birth control pills in their retail pharmacies, spokespersons for each company said in separate statements.
CVS will begin filling prescriptions for the drug in Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the coming weeks, a company spokesperson said. They added that CVS will expand to additional states, “where permitted by law, on a rolling basis.”
Walgreens expects to begin filling prescriptions for the pill within a week at select pharmacy locations in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California and Illinois, a company spokesman said.
It is worth noting that the chains will not provide the medication by mail. The New York Times reported the news earlier Friday.
Mifepristone is the first tablet used in the two-drug medical abortion regimen.
The US Food and Drug Administration has locked horns with anti-abortion doctors in an unprecedented legal challenge to its more than two-decade-long approval of mifepristone. An anti-abortion group sued the agency in 2022 in an attempt to declare such approval illegal and remove birth control pills entirely from the US market.
On March 26, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in this closely watched case.
The US Food and Drug Administration said in January that it would allow retail pharmacies to offer mifepristone in the United States for the first time.
Under a regulatory change at the agency, pharmacies can apply for certification to dispense birth control pills with one of two companies that manufacture them. This certification will allow pharmacies to dispense medication directly to patients upon receiving a prescription from an approved prescriber.
Before the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulatory change, only a few mail-order pharmacies, doctors, or specially approved clinics could dispense mifepristone.
Regulatory change will likely expand access to abortion as the Biden administration grapples with how best to protect abortion rights. The right to abortion in the United States has been severely curtailed by the Supreme Court's 2022 decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling.
The Biden administration has sought to make abortion and contraception a major platform of the president's 2024 campaign.
Medical abortion is the most common way to end a pregnancy in the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This method is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy.
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