Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti recently announced that his office sent a letter to Walgreens, CVS, and Rite Aid confirming that the pharmacies will not sell or dispense mifepristone in the state.
Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is cautioning pharmacies against illegally distributing the abortion-inducing drug, mifepristone, in Tennessee.https://t.co/V8tqKUV32U
— TN Attorney General (@AGTennessee) March 22, 2023
Mifepristone is an abortion-inducing drug that can end a pregnancy up to ten weeks gestation when combined with misoprostol. The treatment is taken as a pill in two doses. In January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved distributing chemical abortion drug treatments to retail pharmacies and mail-ordered services instead of only being accessible in a hospital, clinic, or medical office.
“Dobbs returned the authority to regulate or prohibit abortion to the people through their state governments,” Skrmetti wrote to the three pharmacies. “Tennessee has unequivocally elected to prohibit elective abortions and to strictly regulate the use of abortion-inducing drugs such as mifepristone.”
Citing both the Tennessee and federal laws which “prohibit providing an abortion-inducing drugs via courier, delivery, or mail,” Skrmetti said, “Mifepristone and other abortion-inducing drugs as particularly dangerous for pregnant mothers and are contraindicated in ectopic pregnancies.”
Skrmetti’s letter comes as Walgreens has already clarified that it will not distribute mifepristone in twenty states, including six states bordering Tennessee. In a March 6th statement, Walgreens confirmed it will dispense the abortion treatment “consistent with federal and state laws.”
This is not Skrmetti’s first time pushing back on the FDA’s new policy regarding mifepristone.
In January, The Tennessee Star reported that Skrmetti joined a coalition of attorneys general in sending a letter to the FDA demanding that the original policy on the abortion treatment be reimplemented, meaning patients could only access it in a hospital, clinic, or medical office.
In addition, Skrmetti joined a group of state attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in the Northern District of Texas in the case of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration which also seeks to overturn the new policy.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “Jonathan Skrmetti” by Tennessee Attorney General. Background Photo “Walgreens” by Ambrosia LaFluer. CC BY 2.0.
I am so thankful for this new AG.