AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has joined multistate letters sent to CVS and Walgreens over the companies' decision to seek approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to use the mail to sell abortion pills.
Paxton was one of several attorneys general across the U.S. who signed the letters sent to CVS and Walgreens. This comes after recent announcements from both companies that they planned to seek certification to sell the pill, mifepristone, the first pill used in the two-drug medication abortion regimen.
The letter to CVS states in part that there is a federal law that "expressly prohibits using the mail to send or receive any drug that will 'be used or applied for producing abortion,'" referencing 18 U.S.C. § 1461.
"In December, the Biden administration’s Office of Legal Counsel encouraged the U.S. Postal Service to disregard this plain text. But the text, not the Biden administration’s view, is what governs," the letter states.
The letters to CVS and Walgreens also address what the attorneys general believe are the risks and dangers of abortion pills, stating that they can lead to women having unwanted abortions.
“Abortion pills carry the added risk that when these heightened complications invariably occur, women suffer those harms at home, away from medical help," the letter to Walgreens states. "And finally, mail-order abortion pills also invite the horror of an increase in coerced abortions. When abortion drugs are mailed or consumed outside a regulated medical facility, the risk of coercion is much higher—indeed, guaranteed—because there is no oversight.”
Read the full letter to CVS and the full letter to Walgreens.
KVUE reached out to CVS and Walgreens for statements in response to the letter. Walgreens sent the following statement:
"We are not dispensing Mifepristone at this time. We intend to become a certified pharmacy under the program, however we fully understand that we may not be able to dispense Mifepristone in all locations if we are certified under the program."