Walgreens, CVS Put Women’s Lives at Risk Selling Dangerous Abortion Pills

Opinion   |   Lila Rose   |   Mar 27, 2023   |   1:44PM   |   Washington, DC

The neighborhood pharmacy has been around for as long as we can remember. In the early 1800s, Louis Joseph Dufilho, Jr., of New Orleans, became America’s first licensed pharmacist. As time went on, more and more popped up in every community with one similar quality – they were there to help and heal their neighborhood.

With slogans like “On the corner of happy and healthy” and “Health is everything” major pharmacy chains such as Walgreens and CVS call back to that history, yet are choosing to deviate from that longstanding moral path by deciding to sell the abortion pill.

Walgreens Boot Alliance, Inc. and CVS Health Corp. have both announced plans to dispense chemical abortion drugs along with several other national pharmacy chains. This announcement follows a 2023 decision by the FDA to allow retail pharmacies to dispense the abortion pill. These pharmacies are choosing to become abortion facilities, filling bottles with deadly poison meant to end the life of a child along with blood pressure and allergy medication. These pharmacies should backtrack from their decision immediately, or risk irreversible harm to their brand and customer base.

Since this announcement, many pro-life organizations, including Live Action, have pushed back against these corporations, and the pressure is working. In early March, Walgreens made a statement that they would not sell the pill in the 21 pro-life states where it would be illegal.

In a recent study, The Guttmacher Institute estimates chemical abortions made up 53% of all US abortions in 2020, and that number is expected to increase exponentially in 2023 due to this new expansion.

Chemical abortion is a two-step process that violently ends the life of a young human child. The first pill deprives the growing child in the womb of nutrients so that the baby starves to death; the second pill is meant to expel the child from its mother’s uterus.

A community pharmacy is meant to support the health and well-being of its neighborhood. By making it even easier to kill a child and do physical and emotional harm to the mother, these brands no longer uphold those values. Instead, they disguise themselves as doing good, when they are aiding evil. It’s time for the government to step in to protect women and children from these new abortion clinics – wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Whether or not a chemical abortion takes place at home or at the abortion facility, these beautiful babies are being killed. But dispensing these pills even by prescription when the mother is likely to not have been offered any labs, tests, or exams which could rule out dangerous ectopic pregnancies, confirm gestational age and blood type, is a clear dereliction of duty on the part of a medical provider and pharmacist that places mothers in active danger.

For example, a mother may not be medically eligible to take the abortion pill based on the gestational age of her child, relevant medical history, and if she has an ectopic pregnancy. Many of these factors are unknown in the early stages of pregnancy without a proper medical evaluation, putting the life of the mother at risk.

ACTION ALERT: Contact Walgreens and CVS and let them know you will boycott their stores until they stop selling the abortion pill.

The FDA has reported that 5.6 million preborn children have been killed by abortion pill since its approval in 2000. In addition, there have been reports of 28 deaths associated with the drug. 

By dispensing abortion pills at the neighborhood pharmacy, these brands are encouraging women to commit these very dangerous abortions at home, without medical supervision, and most often alone. The mother can simply get a prescription written virtually – a new fad called telabortion.

Results from a recent telabortion study show that potentially 20,000 women per year could require treatment at ERs or urgent care facilities after taking the abortion pill at home. That means over 7% of women who take the abortion pill regimen will end up hospitalized – or worse.

Without oversight, a teen could be killing her baby without her parents’ knowledge and found hemorrhaging on the floor of her high school bathroom. An abusive husband could poison the food of his pregnant wife or a trafficker could provide the abortion pill to his young victim. These may sound like horror stories, and they are, but they are not fictional. This is the path brands such as CVS and Walgreens are paving for our younger generation.

The government must take a stand to stop these wolves from deceiving the public. We must share the deadly truth about chemical abortions, and about the growing child within the womb that is killed in the end. Depending on the age of the child, a mother could experience great pain in the termination process, and could actually see her baby when it’s over. No mother should ever experience this real-life horror.

These pharmacies have no business making abortion their business. Even pro-abortion policy restrictions on the abortion pill such as medical oversight, ultrasound requirements, and waiting periods can take the power away from the pharmacies and place it back in the hands of the mother, allowing her time to learn more about the growing child in her womb and to decide to keep her baby and choose life.

This is the hope we have in the pro-life movement; that mothers will see past the taglines and understand that this easily accessible pill regimen was developed to kill their child and will hurt them in the process. We hope they will instead see the beauty and sanctity of human life, and choose a truly “happy and healthy” life for themselves and their babies.

LifeNews Note: Lila Rose is the president of Live Action, a new media nonprofit dedicated to ending abortion and building a culture of life.

ACTION ALERT: Contact Walgreens and CVS and let them know you will boycott their stores until they stop selling the abortion pill.