GOP Attorneys General warn CVS and Walgreens against delivering abortion pills

02 February 2023

Republican attorneys general (AGs) warned the two largest pharmacy store chains in the United States not to mail abortion pills or legal action will be taken, The Week reports.

A press release distributed by the office of conservative Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey notes that he penned two letters to Walgreens and CVS "informing them that their announced plan" to deliver abortion pills by mail violates the 150-year-old Comstock Act.

The 1873 law, according to Axios, prohibited "sending what at the time was deemed to be pornographic publications through the mail," as well as "the mailing of any article or thing intended for the prevention of contraception."

AGs from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia all signed on to the letter.

According to Axios, the letters come weeks after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) made a rule change authorizing community pharmacies to sell mifepristone, an abortion pill.

Referencing the Comstock Act, the letter read, "Although many people are unfamiliar with this statute because it has not been amended in a few decades, the text could not be clearer: 'every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion ... shall not be conveyed in the mails.' And anyone who 'knowingly takes any such thing from the mails for the purpose of circulating' is guilty of a federal crime."

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However, The Week reports that Department of Justice (DOJ) Legal Counsel asserts that abortion pill delivery is allowed "to states that have strict limits on abortion."

Still, Bailey contends that "he will enforce the laws as written," and that despite what the DOJ says, he and his conservative comrades do not agree.

Axios reports Walgreens confirmed that the pharmacy is "not dispensing mifepristone at this time."

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