Pharmacies at the second-largest grocery chain in the U.S. as well as the nation’s second-largest wholesale business, are now dispensing abortion drugs, according to reports this week. The news of the expanded availability of the drug comes despite intense controversy surrounding the health risks that chemical abortion poses to women, with widespread reports of severe medical complications — including death — resulting from the pills.
On Thursday, the pro-life advocacy group Live Action reported that Kroger is now offering the abortion drug mifepristone at its pharmacies, with a significantly discounted price of $7 to Kroger Health Savings Club members. Comparatively, Planned Parenthood, the nation’s leading abortion supplier, states that the average cost of the drug at its businesses is $580.
At the same time, wholesale chain Sam’s Club, which is a division of Walmart, has also begun dispensing the abortion pill, as Live Action discovered on Wednesday. Sam’s Club, along with Kroger, are now part of a growing list of national chains to offer the abortion drug, which also includes CVS and Walgreens.
The news comes as government-provided data show that chemical abortions now account for well over half of all abortions carried out in the U.S. Over the last decade, the use of the abortion pill has more than doubled, rising by 129%. As noted by The Washington Stand’s Ben Johnson, “The FDA approved the abortion pill, mifepristone, in 2000 for use only for the first seven weeks, but the abortion industry widely flouted those norms. The Obama administration extended the deadly pill’s use to 10 weeks in 2016.”
ACTION ALERT: Contact Kroger and tell it to stop selling the abortion drug that kills babies and hurts women.
The expansion of the abortion drug’s availability through the work of Democratic officials and in nationwide pharmacy chains is happening despite alarming health risks, which Sam’s Club’s own pharmacy website acknowledges. “This drug must be used only if you can easily reach adequate emergency medical services in case you have a serious medical problem,” it states. “This drug may make you dizzy.” The site goes on to note that in some cases, “bleeding will need to be stopped by surgery.” The FDA’s medication guide notes that as much as 7% of women will in fact need surgery after taking mifepristone “to stop bleeding” or to complete the abortion.
As Live Action has observed, “With Guttmacher’s latest numbers showing that 63% of the 1,037,000 abortions in 2023 were done by abortion pill, this means that as many as 45,000 women could require surgery after taking the abortion pill every year.” (Emphasis in original.)
Other studies have found that one in five chemical abortions have resulted in negative health outcomes. In addition, according to incomplete FDA data from between 2000 and 2021 (due to some states’ refusal to report abortion data), ingestion of the abortion drug resulted in 4,207 adverse events — including 26 deaths, 1,045 hospitalizations, 603 events requiring a blood transfusion, and 413 infections.
Still other studies show that women suffer extensive psychological harm after taking the abortion pill. One found that one-third (34%) of women “reported an adverse change in themselves, including depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and thoughts of suicide.”
Notably, Kroger’s new policy of dispensing the abortion drug is coinciding with legal headaches for the grocery chain. On Wednesday, reports surfaced that the grocery giant Albertsons has filed suit against Kroger after a multibillion-dollar merger deal fell through. The lawsuit stated that Kroger “willfully breached the Merger Agreement in several key ways, including by repeatedly refusing to divest assets necessary for antitrust approval, ignoring regulators’ feedback, rejecting stronger divestiture buyers and failing to cooperate with Albertsons.”
It appears that Kroger also ignored the advice of over a dozen state attorneys general. In February 2023, 19 state AGs sent a letter to Kroger and other retailers warning them that dispensing the abortion drug by mail is a federal crime, in addition to detailing the medical risk of the drugs and their potential to be used for coerced abortions.
Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, expressed sadness at the news of Kroger and Sam’s Club’s decision to distribute the abortion drug.
“My son and daughter especially love their trips to Harris Teeter — our local grocery store owned by Kroger — because they have carts with steering wheels for kids,” she told The Washington Stand. “This family-friendly feature makes trips to the grocery store, where we purchase food to nourish our family, a joy. Sadly, we will no longer be visiting the Harris Teeter, as Kroger has decided to become an abortion business.”
“At Kroger pharmacies, women with a prescription will be able to purchase mifepristone, the drug that will starve their unborn child to death,” Szoch continued. “Moreover, after picking up this drug, the pregnant mother will be left alone to evaluate whether her bleeding from the abortion is an appropriate level or life-threatening, to discern whether all of the tissue from her unborn child has been expelled from her body, to figure out if the pain she is experiencing is a sign her pregnancy was ectopic, and most horrifically — to deliver her unborn child, who may be visibly recognizable as a baby, into the toilet.”
“This could not be more antithetical to Kroger’s mission to be family-friendly and to provide nourishment for families,” Szoch concluded. “Sam’s Club has chosen the same path. Shame on both companies. They should stick to providing food for families — not to providing a drug that will starve an unborn baby to death. Grocery stores should not be abortion businesses.”
LifeNews Note: Dan Hart writes for the Family Research Council. He is the senior editor of The Washington Stand.
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