The parent company of Walgreens and CVS are the first big national pharmacies to announce that they will sell abortion pills in accordance with the Food and Drug Administration’s new regulations (FDA).
The new rules, released on Tuesday, allow any pharmacy to become approved to supply mifepristone, the medicine that suppresses a hormone required for a healthy pregnancy.
FDA Approved Abortion Pills
The FDA has cleared the medication for use during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. The medicine was formally approved by a limited number of mail-order pharmacies, and only licensed physicians may prescribe it. Since 2000, however, it has been FDA-approved.
Last year, the Biden administration announced it would no longer enforce a long-standing rule that women pick up their medication in person.
Upon receiving a prescription from a certified prescriber, they will be able to deliver it directly to patients provided their applications are approved.
The modification could increase accessibility in both physical storefronts and online pharmacies.
Where permitted by law, women can obtain a prescription via telehealth consultation with a medical expert and then receive the pills by mail.
The FDA first stated that these modifications will be implemented in December 2021, when it announced that it would loosen certain risk assessment and mitigation strategies (REMS) for the pill.
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Safety Concerns
Due to safety concerns, the FDA labeling has restricted dispensing to a subset of specialized offices and clinics for more than two decades.
Throughout the COVID-19 epidemic, the FDA suspended the in-person requirement temporarily.
Later, the government stated that a new scientific study conducted by agency personnel supported easing access, agreeing with various medical organizations that had long argued that the limitation was unnecessary.
Mifeprex is the brand name for the drug mifepristone, which, usually combined with the multipurpose pharmaceutical misoprostol, which also produces abortions up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy, is known as medication abortion.
Abortion rights advocates have asserted that the pill has a long history of being safe and effective, without any risk of overdose or addiction.
In certain countries, including India and Mexico, women can obtain this abortion-inducing medicine without a prescription.
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