Pro-life Americans received welcome news earlier this month from the Walgreens pharmacy chain. After 20 state attorneys general wrote to Walgreens on February 1 and warned the company against distributing abortion pills, Walgreens reportedly assured those 20 attorneys general that it had no intention of distributing the pills in their respective states. (The company did indicate, however, that it is attempting to gain permission to distribute the drugs in certain other states.)
Unfortunately, two of New York’s highest-ranking elected officials are determined to push back against Walgreens’s decision. On March 9, 2023, Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James wrote to the chief executive officer of Walgreens and to the chief executive officers of Rite Aid, and CVS. In that letter, the Governor and the Attorney General encouraged the three companies to make abortion pills available “as widely as possible,” both in New York and across the nation.
The Hochul-James letter begins by bemoaning the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the Court’s 1973 abortion-on-demand decision in Roe v. Wade. After calling pro-life advocates “anti-abortion extremists,” the letter makes the extraordinary claim that a national ban on abortion could cause maternal mortality rates to increase by 24%. The letter then applauds the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s December 2022 removal of the requirement that abortion pills be distributed in person. The letter goes on to falsely accuse the 20 attorneys general who wrote to Walgreens in February of “misrepresenting the facts” and misinterpreting a federal law that bans the mailing of abortion pills. Gov. Hochul and Attorney General James then urge the three companies “to commit to making this critical medication available as widely as possible, based on a fair and unbiased interpretation of state and federal law.” The letter ends by asking the three companies whether they will commit to making abortion pills available “to patients with a doctor’s prescription at all FDA-certified pharmacy locations in the State of New York” and “via mail with a doctor’s prescription to patients in the State of New York.” Responses were requested within 10 days.
By writing this letter, Gov. Hochul and Attorney General James have confirmed yet again that they are militant pro-abortion extremists who are not content to simply poison the state of New York with their dangerous abortion policies; rather, they fully intend to push those same policies on other states as well.