An announcement from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) explained that retail pharmacies such as Walgreens and CVS will now be able to stock and provide abortion pills.
Previously, the abortion drug Mifepristone was only able to be issued via doctors, clinics, or some mail-order pharmacies. This new rule change coming from the FDA will make it so that any pharmacy following its guidelines will be able to fill prescription orders in stores and by mail.
“Mifeprex and its generic Mifepristone Tablets, 200 mg, are available under a single, shared system risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS), known as the Mifepristone REMS Program, which sets forth the requirements that must be followed for mifepristone for medical termination of pregnancy through ten weeks gestation,” explained the FDA in an update released to the public on Tuesday.
The FDA issued a recommendation that no one should buy Mifepristone online without a prescription.
“The FDA does not have regulatory oversight of prescription medicines from outside the legitimate U.S. drug supply chain; therefore, the FDA cannot ensure the safety, effectiveness, or quality of those medications,” the guidance stated.
As explained by the Guttmacher Institute, medication-based abortion was responsible for roughly 54% of abortions in 2020 in the U.S. That percentage is most likely only going to spike as these abortion pills become available for retail pharmacies.
This new update from the FDA hits the public in the wake of a year of massive changes to national abortion policies. This past June, the justices of the Supreme Court officially Roe v. Wade and handed back abortion laws to individual states.
A group of thirteen states had in place trigger laws that kicked off to further limit access to abortion in the wake of the court’s decision. Several other states passed laws after the ruling seeking to strengthen their restrictions on abortion.
A number of battles in court have since spawned, with a number of new abortion limitations placed on hold until cases are held.
A number of states, like Mississippi, have already issued rulings against abortion pills. Tate Reeves, the Republican Governor of Mississippi, stated this past July that medical professionals all across his state would lose their medical licenses for handing out abortion pills.
“If a physician is practicing medicine in the state of Mississippi, they have to have a license to do so and if abortion is illegal in our state, which it is, then those medicines will not be allowed and they will not have a license to practice in our state,” explained Reeves back in July.
“Any physician that is practicing, whether it’s through telemedicine or otherwise… that practices in our state is practicing not only based upon the standards of care that we require in our state, but also based upon state law,” he stated.
