(LifeSiteNews) –– Major grocery chain Kroger now says it will not dispense the abortion pill mifepristone, following pro-life backlash over an online listing the company claims was posted in error.
Last week, Live Action and the Washington Stand reported that mifepristone was listed on a Kroger website among “popular” drugs available through a Kroger Health Savings Club membership, for as little as $7. The listing did not disclose any of the drug’s potential risks.
“Live Action News called the number listed for Kroger Health Savings Club and inquired whether the drugs listed here would be available at every Kroger Pharmacy,” LAN added. “We were told that this website is not a mail-order pharmacy, but that customers will need to ask at each specific Kroger Pharmacy whether mifepristone will be in stock or available at that location.”
This week, however, the Stand updated its story with a reply the company sent on Monday: “The Kroger Family of Pharmacies doesn’t carry Mifepristone and was listed on the Kroger Health Savings Club site in error.” Mifepristone is no longer advertised on the Savings Club website.
Concerns remain, however, over membership warehouse chain Sam’s Club, a division of Walmart, which also recently began listing the abortion pill online.
Two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and restored the elected branches of government’s right to decide abortion policy through the democratic process, 13 states ban most abortions, with lesser restrictions and regulations on the books in numerous others.
In response, Democrats and the abortion lobby have been working feverishly to reinforce abortion “access” through a variety of strategies. Among them are legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, placing abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors, enshrining abortion “rights” in state constitutions, and expanding the distribution of abortion pills into pro-life states by letting them be ordered and dispensed by mail, making abortion bans harder to enforce.
Abortion pills carry distinct risks to women who take them, especially when done so without medical oversight. A 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.”
Pro-lifers warn that with the Biden administration’s complete removal of requirements that abortion pills be taken in the presence of a medical professional, meaning without any medical supervision or medical support close by, those events are certain to increase.
Despite that, however, and despite taking abortion pills without medical supervision increasing their risks, returning President Donald Trump says he will not enforce federal law prohibiting abortion pills from being dispensed by mail, continuing an unprecedented change first made by his predecessor Joe Biden.