Walgreens said on Friday it does not plan to dispense abortion pills in Kansas after state Attorney General Kris Kobach wrote a letter to the pharmacy warning of legal action if it goes along with President Joe Biden’s abortion-for-all scheme.
In early January, Walgreens became the first pharmacy to announce it would sell the lethal chemical abortion drug mifepristone, in stores and by mail, under new rules by Biden’s Food and Drug Administration, which are intended to kick the door open for dangerous at-home abortions and work around pro-life laws in red states. Mifepristone is part of a two-drug process for killing and expelling a preborn baby from his or her mother’s womb.
Kobach blamed the “ends-justify-the-means” Biden administration for muddying the issue and objected to the drugs being sold in Kansas. “I have become aware of your company’s recently announced plan to provide abortifacients through its mail-order pharmacy business,” Kobach wrote in a letter to Walgreens executive Danielle Gray on Feb. 6. “As the chief law enforcement officer in Kansas, I am writing to advise you that this plan is illegal, and Kansas will not hesitate to enforce the law.”
According to Kobach, Walgreens’ plan violates both federal law and state statute. Kansas statute requires that abortion-inducing drugs such as mifepristone “be given to the patient by or in the same room and in the physical presence of the physician who prescribed, dispensed or otherwise provided the drug or prescription to the patient.” Furthermore, though Biden’s FDA approves of sending mifepristone through the mail for DIY chemical abortions, Kobach notes that under Title 18, Section 1461 of the United States Code, “every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion” is considered “nonmailable matter” and thus cannot be mailed.
“Ordinarily, the national government’s steadfast determination not to enforce the law would be the end of things,” Kobach wrote. “But §1461 is not a normal criminal statute because it can be enforced by an ordinary private-party lawsuit,” meaning, according to the attorney general, that private parties are authorized under Title 18, Section 1964 to sue entities that violate Section 1461, among other statutes.
In response to Kobach’s warning, Gray, the executive vice president of Walgreens Boots Alliance, which owns Walgreens pharmacies, said:
Walgreens does not intend to dispense Mifepristone within your state and does not intend to ship Mifepristone into your state from any of our pharmacies. If this approach changes, we will be sure to notify you.
Kansas isn’t standing alone against federal pressure to provide virtually on-demand, mail-order abortion in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned. Twenty other state attorneys general have issued similar warnings to CVS and Walgreens over the legally dubious and dangerous plan.
While touted by Democrats as health care, chemical abortions, which account for more than half of abortions in the United States, are not only lethal for the unborn child but extremely risky for the baby’s mother, especially given the lack of physician oversight when performed at home. A study published in Obstetrics and Gynecology concluded that women who get chemical abortions are four times more likely to experience complications than those who get surgical abortions. Other research shows abortion pills such as mifepristone are associated with a 500 percent increase in abortion-related ER visits. As The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd reported:
One longitudinal study revealed that, in at least 17 states with taxpayer-funded abortion, many of which have relaxed chemical abortion laws, emergency room visits within 30 days following chemical abortions grew to nearly 34 percent of all ER visits as of 2015. The same study concluded that “chemical abortion is consistently and progressively associated with more postabortion ER visit morbidity than surgical abortion,” and the risks have been increasing year after year.
“President Biden is beholden to the country’s most extreme pro-abortion voices, who constantly advocate for expanding the abortion regime without any consideration of legality or even women’s safety,” Kobach told Gray. “But nothing requires you to join him. The law says what it says. I encourage you to follow it.”
