Walgreens and CVS Selling the Abortion Pill Would be a Disaster for Women and Children

Both CVS and Walgreens have been in the news recently due to widespread dissatisfaction among their employees. Rite Aid, which faces many of the same challenges, just announced that it has filed for bankruptcy, giving them more important things than abortion pill certification to worry about.

Last week thousands of pharmacy staff walked off the job at Walgreens. They complained about working conditions, being understaffed and overworked, having to deal with backlogs of prescriptions that they say put employees and patients at risk (Washington Post, 10/9/23).

CVS faced similar issues with a walkout in Missouri just a month ago, citing many of the same complaints, shortly after the pharmacy chain announced plans to lay off 5,000 employees (USA Today, 9 /22/23; ABC News, 8/1/23).

A quick resolution seems unlikely. This Sunday, CNBC reported that Walgreen and CVS workers are planning a national strike for the end of this month (Becker Hospital Review, 10/16/23).

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No one at this point has publicly voiced concerns about corporate efforts to push abortion pills. But it certainly cannot be a policy that many CVS and Walgreens employees, certainly any pro-lifers committed to real health care, are eager to implement or in which they want to participate.

A fatal mistake

A case in Las Vegas involving two CVS pharmacists shows how easily and how badly things can go wrong.

Given a prescription for what was likely a progesterone suppository to help her prevent a miscarriage, CVS employees instead gave Timika Thomas misoprostol, the anti-ulcer prostaglandin used in conjunction with (and sometimes -isa) as an abortifacient. By taking the wrong medicine, Thomas lost the two babies he was carrying.

Media sources report two slightly different versions of the incident. At first, a CVS technician thought misoprostol was the generic name for the doctor-prescribed brand and entered the wrong name into the computer (CLASS, 8 News Today, 10/3/23). In the second, the technician struggled to decipher Thomas’ fertility doctor’s handwriting and guessed the medication, instead of calling the doctor to confirm (People magazine, 10/5/23)

Whether the first or the second was the accurate presentation of events or some combination of the two, after that point a pharmacist failed to catch the mistake and then a second failed to communicate and confirm with Thomas when he arrived him to take the medicine.

In hearings before the board of pharmacy, both pharmacists apologized, one sobbing and calling it “a human error,” saying “I’m so sorry” (CLASS10/3/23).

One of those pharmacists pointed to cuts at CVS that frustrated employees, unable to do all the necessary double checking (People10/5/23).

The two pharmacists were fined and had their licenses temporarily suspended (to be reinstated in 12 months if they comply with the board’s rulings) and the pharmacy was fined $10,000.

It wasn’t enough for Thomas, who said CLASS that “All I got was an apology … It wasn’t going to be good enough.”

Hard lesson to learn

Human error or not, there are many important lessons to be learned from this tragic event.

First, that there are many ways a prescription can go wrong and that the training of CVS pharmacists, however conscientious it may be, will not be good enough to protect patients from tragic mistakes like this.

Second, that the mere presence of abortifacients on the shelves of your neighborhood pharmacy creates the potential for fatal errors, so that casual missteps have horrific and irreversible consequences.

Third, that working conditions such as those that exist at that pharmacy and apparently many others at the CVS and Walgreens chains make these kinds of fatal slip-ups more likely.

In a sense, this shows that the concerns of the FDA in putting these certification requirements in place are warranted and the preservation of pharmacy chains is more than justified. In a larger sense, however, it illustrates how the drug corruption involved in a government agency that authorizes the sale of infanticide drugs threatens to compromise if not completely destroy the integrity of the entire system of health care.

Remaining Questions

All these factors together raise questions not only about when the abortion pill will be sold at CVS and Walgreens pharmacies, but also where and how. Will they only be sold in a few regional stores? Are they only available for personal pickup?

Will internal pressures from disgruntled employees destroy the project? Or will external pressure from pro-life customers and political leaders cause CVS and Walgreens to rethink the moral and legal and economic implications of the decisions they’ve made?

How long before the next prescription mix-up and the next lawsuit against one of these pharmacists and their parent corporation?

Will the Supreme Court step in and side with those who want to build them on the market or side with those who want to sell and ship them to states where their sale and use is controlled or prohibited?

All that remains to be seen.

What is clear here, because of the many popular myths surrounding the supporters of these abortion pills that are promoted as almost “magic,” is that the truth is not as simple or as beautiful as the proponents of mifepristone believe. These pills still come with significant risks and concerns that no amount of regulation or certification can easily resolve.

Hopefully sooner, rather than later, pharmacies will realize that these pills are bad for babies, bad for mothers, and bad for business.

LifeNews.com Note: Randall O’Bannon, Ph.D., is the director of education and research for the National Right to Life Committee. This column originally appeared on NRL News Today.