(LifeSiteNews) — While the Biden administration pushes for access to abortion pills in the aftermath of the Dobbs ruling, chain pharmacies in the United States are sending a message to young women that killing their babies is as simple, easy, and normal as buying a vitamin from your local drug store.
To kick off 2023, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) updated its guidelines surrounding mifepristone, one of two drugs used to kill a child in early stages of development. The federal agency loosened its regulations on access to the abortion pill, allowing retail pharmacies to carry the drugs once they have completed an agreement form.
As previously reported by LifeSiteNews, these pharmacies can become “certified” to dispense mifepristone by completing a “Pharmacy Agreement Form.” While the drug still requires a prescription, medical professionals must also be certified through an FDA training system. Women who receive a prescription can pick up the deathly pills at an approved pharmacy instead of a medical clinic, limiting the amount of medical supervision present when distributing and using the dangerous drugs.
Mifepristone was originally approved by the FDA in 2000. Combined with misoprostol, the drug acts as an abortifacient in early stages of pregnancy. Mifepristone prevents the hormone progesterone from reaching the developing baby and misoprostol induces labor.
On January 19, Rite Aid became the latest chain pharmacy to announce its plans to distribute mifepristone at certain locations, both by mail and in person. The business has not yet responded to a request for further details.
Rite Aid has over 2,330 stores across 17 states in America, including California, Massachusetts, New York, Washington state, Oregon, Vermont, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Idaho, Delaware, and Connecticut.
But Rite Aid was not the first retail pharmacy to accept the opportunity to profit from babies dying. Shortly after the FDA updated its abortion pill guidelines, CVS and Walgreens announced that their businesses would begin the certification process. These two retailers have stores in all 50 states, including Washington, D.C.
The pharmacies participating in the government’s push to increase access to the abortion pill are sending a chilling message to women: killing your unborn babies is in the same realm as picking up everyday items such as vitamins or magazines from a neighborhood store.
Even though abortion giants like Planned Parenthood have been advocating for the murder of the unborn for decades, the requirement to have women enter those facilities in order to do so cast a certain understanding that choosing to take the abortion pill wasn’t just accepting a prescription for an illness. It’s more intimidating to have to walk into an abortion facility — where pro-lifers may be praying outside — than to obtain a prescription from a medical professional in person or online and pick up the pills at Rite Aid, where nobody would know why you were there.
Abortion pills will be advertised as just another item in the drug stores, where little girls will see young women picking up mifepristone with the same ease and normalcy as buying a toothbrush. The reality that these pills are killing innocent, unrepeatable babies will be overshadowed by the belief that something so terrible couldn’t possibly be so simple and common.
Contrary to the message being sent to women, the abortion pill is an incredibly dangerous drug for mothers alongside the babies who are killed. Mifepristone and misoprostol, the so-called “gold standard” for medication abortions, have been found to cause serious negative side effects. A Canadian watchdog group summary last year reported 43 cases of adverse reactions, including four cases of life-threatening sepsis. Other serious implications are hemorrhaging and fainting.
In November, pro-life doctors and medical groups filed a lawsuit challenging the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill regimen, stating that pregnancy is not a disease to be “fixed” by abortion and citing the thousands of adverse events experienced by women since the drugs’ approval over 20 years ago. Last month, 22 state attorneys general demanded that the federal agency remove its rules allowing retail pharmacies to distribute the pills, calling the guidelines “illegal and dangerous.”
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