Walgreens confirmed on Thursday it would no longer carry abortion pills in a number of states, including a few where it is still legal to obtain them.
The phrases “#Walgreens” and “#BoycottWalgreens” each trended on Twitter late Thursday night and early Friday as discussions took place, with some users swearing off supporting the chain.
The decisions, first reported Thursday by Politico, came after last month 20 Republican Attorney Generals wrote Walgreens and a handful of other drugstores, including CVS, Walmart and Costco, pointing out laws that might be broken if the companies provided abortion pills by mail.
“California will not stand by as corporations cave to extremists and cut off critical access to reproductive care and freedom,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is on track to be the fourth largest economy in the world and we will leverage our market power to defend the right to choose.”
A spokesperson for Walgreens told Insider in a statement that it has responded to the states represented by the 20 AGs, and confirmed it would not be providing Mifepristone, an abortion drug, to any of those states. Those states include Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, and Montana, which are all states where the procedure and drugs to perform abortions are largely still legal, Politico reported.
“Walgreens is facing the same circumstances as all retail pharmacies, and no other pharmacies have said that they would approach this situation differently, so it’s unclear where this contract would not be moved,” the spokesperson told the AP.
The FDA announced in January that retail pharmacies will be allowed to distribute the pills to people who have been prescribed them; the pills were formerly available only through doctors or through mail-order pharmacies.
At that time, Walgreens told Insider it was working on becoming certified by the FDA to sell abortion pills in states where they are legal. A spokeswoman told Insider Friday by e-mail that Walgreens is still committed to becoming an FDA-certified pill seller, and that it would only distribute pills in “those jurisdictions where they are both legal and operationally viable.”
While the company wrote to the 20 AGs saying that it will not dispense pills in their states, it has yet to publicly confirm what states may have access to the pills. Some Twitter users expressed their support for Walgreenss decision, but several prominent commentators and Democrats expressed displeasure at the policy.
“California will not stand by as corporations cave to extremists and cut off critical access to reproductive care and freedom,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is on track to be the fourth largest economy in the world and we will leverage our market power to defend the right to choose.”
Senator Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., tweeted: “Their tagline is Trust Since 1901 — but if #walgreens is going to refuse to fill prescriptions for legitimately needed medications, where is the “trust” in that?”
She added: “This deliberate corporate choice would keep so many women from choosing health care that they need and are legally entitled to receive. Responses to the initial Politico report by Alice Miranda Ollstein on Twitter were also filled with hundreds of users saying that they would “no longer spend money at Walgreens” or would “never set foot inside Walgreens again.”
Mifepristone is now under the center of several lawsuits, and a Texas judge is expected to rule on a challenge by Republican AGs seeking to revoke the decades-old FDAs approval of the drug over the next few weeks.
Several Democratic attorneys general filed arguments in the case last month saying banning the pill would cause “unprecedented increases” in maternal deaths.
