Walgreens introduced final week that it’d cease promoting mifepristone, a well-liked abortion capsule, in purple states. California Gov. Gavin Newsom says his state will reduce ties with the pharmacy big after the transfer.
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Michael M. Santiago/Getty Photos
Walgreens introduced final week that it’d cease promoting mifepristone, a well-liked abortion capsule, in purple states. California Gov. Gavin Newsom says his state will reduce ties with the pharmacy big after the transfer.
Michael M. Santiago/Getty Photos
Final week, Walgreens mentioned it is not going to distribute abortion capsules in states the place Republican officers have threatened authorized motion. Now a blue state says it’ll reduce ties with the pharmacy big due to the transfer.
“California will not be doing enterprise with @walgreens – or any firm that cowers to the extremists and places ladies’s lives in danger,” Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a tweet yesterday with a hyperlink to information protection of Walgreen’s determination.
“We’re finished,” he added.
A spokesperson for Gov. Newsom instructed NPR that “all relationships between Walgreens and the state” had been underneath assessment, however declined to share specifics, together with a timeline. Walgreens shares fell 1.77% on Monday following Newsom’s announcement.
Walgreens has been underneath fireplace since confirming final week that it would not dispense the favored abortion capsule mifepristone in sure states after 20 Republican state attorneys normal despatched letters threatening authorized motion.
An FDA determination in January allowed for retail pharmacies to start out promoting mifepristone in individual and by mail given they full a certification course of. However the shifting coverage panorama has left Walgreens, alongside different nationwide pharmacy chains like RiteAid and CVS, weighing up when and the place to start out shelling out the medicine.
Walgreens instructed NPR on Friday that it will nonetheless take steps to promote mifepristone in “jurisdictions the place it’s authorized and operationally possible.” The drug — which can also be typically utilized in instances of miscarriage — remains to be allowed in a few of the states threatening Walgreens, together with Iowa, Kansas, Alaska and Montana, although a few of these states impose further restrictions on how it may be distributed or are litigating legal guidelines that might.
Walgreens responded to NPR’s newest request for remark by pointing to a press release it printed on Monday, reiterating that it was ready on FDA certification to dispense mifepristone “per federal and state legal guidelines.”
California, which might be on observe to changing into the world’s fourth largest economic system if it had been its personal nation, has immense shopping for energy within the healthcare market.
Greater than 13 million Californians depend on the state’s Medicaid program.
Even when the state solely reduce Walgreens out of state worker insurance coverage, the corporate may see a giant monetary influence: The state insures greater than 200,000 full-time staff. One other 1.5 million, together with dependents as much as the age of 26, are coated by CalPERS, its retirement insurance coverage program.
Richard Dang, a pharmacist and president of the California Pharmacists Affiliation, instructed NPR that Newsom had but to share any particulars on the plan, however Walgreens’ enterprise could be “severely restricted” by adjustments to state insurance coverage.
Lindsay Wiley, a well being regulation professor at College of California Los Angeles, mentioned the struggle underscores the speedy adjustments in coverage following the Supreme Court docket’s Dobbs determination final 12 months.
“It is a struggle over the longer term that actually issues underneath the present present authorized regime,” she mentioned in an interview with NPR. “Mifepristone and abortion capsules have develop into a political soccer for state elected officers, governors, attorneys normal to say the facility that they must affect well being care entry.”
Remedy abortion, versus surgical procedure, is the most well-liked manner individuals terminate pregnancies, accounting for greater than half of all abortions within the U.S.
Along with Republicans’ authorized threats towards wider distribution of mifepristone, an ongoing federal case in Texas is difficult the FDA’s approval of the drug, aiming to take away it from the market altogether.
NPR’s Selena Simmons-Duffin, Sarah McCammon and Kaitlyn Radde contributed reporting.
