(Corine Gatti, Headline USA) Student pro-life organizations are taking on pharmacies that announced they will distribute the abortion drug mifepristone.
Students for Life of America and 40 Days for Life protested at various Walgreens and CVS locations, which faced criticism due to the companies’ plans to seek approval to dispense mifepristone.
“We will not sit quietly while our neighborhood drugstores become distribution centers for death and danger,” posted SFLA President Kristan Hawkins on the organization’s website prior to the protests.
The FDA allowed abortion medication to be prescribed and administered through medical offices, hospitals and health clinics. With pharmacies possibly joining the list, many pro-life organizations are concerned.
“Abortion pills have to get into a state somewhere, and they have to get out of a state somewhere,” Sarah Parshall Perry, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner.
“Use of the mail by either the manufacturer or the distributor, the shipper, the recipient, the pharmacy, all of these are very clearly against the U.S. criminal code,” she continued. “So that is the overarching consideration for all of this. But then in addition, this particular group of Republican attorneys general recognize that within their states, there are also state restrictions on abortions.”
Thirteen Republican attorneys general have warned that pharmacy chains could face legal repercussions if they choose to dispense abortion medication through the mail in their respective states of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina and Texas.
A Walgreens spokesperson told the Examiner earlier in March that it was not currently distributing mifepristone.
“We intend to be a certified pharmacy and will distribute mifepristone only in those jurisdictions where it is legal and operationally feasible,” said the spokesperson.
CVS and Rite Aid are in the process of seeking certification to provide abortions in the states that allow it. It not known which states exactly this will be available in.
About 53% of abortions currently rely on chemical induction through pharmaceuticals, the far-left Guttmacher Institute reported.
