The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced last year that it would allow retail pharmacies to begin selling the drug.
Walgreens said it would roll out the drug in stores in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois, while CVS would first dispense the drug in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the Reuters report said.
Supporters say the medication, which was approved by the FDA in 2000, has a safe and effective record and that it carries no risk of overdose or addiction, the report added.
But some groups like the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine have raised concerns about its safety.
In 2022, the Guttmacher Institute, an NGO that aims to improve sexual health, said that medication-induced abortion counted for more than half of all US abortions.
The politicization of abortion rights has intensified in recent years, particularly following the Supreme Court’s landmark 2022 decision to overturn the Roe vs. Wade ruling.
President Joe Biden, who has pinned his hopes of reelection on the abortion debate, hailed the news about CVS and Walgreens and called on other pharmacies interested in selling the pills to seek certification.
“Today is an important milestone in ensuring access to mifepristone, a drug that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as safe and effective for more than 20 years,” the president said in a statement on Friday.
“In the face of relentless attacks on reproductive freedom by Republican elected officials, Vice President Harris and I will continue to fight to defend the Food and Drug Administration’s independent and evidence-based approval and regulation of mifepristone,” a post on his X, formerly Twitter, account reads.
But the Supreme Court is due to hear a case about limiting access to mifepristone later this year, with a decision likely to come in the middle of the election race.
As the campaign trail heats up, Trump has also turned his attention to the topic of abortion, and he teased possible support for a 15-week limit on abortion during an interview on Fox News earlier this week, Politico reported.
