California will finish enterprise with Walgreens over abortion tablet stance, Newsom says

California will sever enterprise ties with Walgreens after the pharmacy big introduced it might not distribute abortion drugs in a number of states the place abortion is authorized, Gov. Gavin Newsom tweeted Monday.

“California gained’t be doing enterprise with @walgreens — or any firm that cowers to the extremists and places ladies’s lives in danger,” Newsom wrote. “We’re executed.” 

A spokesperson for Newsom, Brandon Richards, mentioned in an announcement that “California is reviewing all relationships between Walgreens and the state.”

Richards declined to make clear what the state’s present enterprise with the pharmacy chain is and the way it might minimize ties.

Walgreens introduced final week that it might not promote abortion drugs in a number of states the place abortion stays authorized, together with Alaska, Florida, Iowa and Montana. It had confronted strain from 20 Republican attorneys basic, who instructed Walgreens in a letter that it may face authorized penalties if it offered abortion treatment in these states, some the place abortion is against the law and a few the place it stays authorized.

Walgreens didn’t reply to a request for remark about Newsom’s assertion. It mentioned in assertion Monday, the identical day as Newsom’s, that it “plans to dispense mifepristone in any jurisdiction the place it’s legally permissible to take action.” Final week, Fraser Engerman, Walgreens’ senior director of exterior relations, mentioned the chain was not dishing out mifepristone anyplace within the nation. Engerman added that Walgreens was looking for FDA certification to promote mifepristone however was navigating a “advanced and in-flux space of the legislation.”

Newsom, a Democrat, has positioned himself as a crusader for abortion rights. Final month, he led an alliance for Democratic governors to share mannequin laws and potential govt orders about safeguarding abortion entry.

Medicine abortion has grow to be a brand new battleground for abortion rights, with pharmacies typically caught within the crossfire. It accounted for greater than half of all U.S. abortions in 2020, in keeping with the Guttmacher Institute, a analysis group that advocates for abortion entry. Mifepristone is normally the primary drug utilized in a two-drug treatment abortion routine.

“I feel you’ll see actual efforts to focus on it, to attempt to take it off the markets, to ban it in states, in addition to efforts to make it extra accessible,” Rachel Rebouché, the dean of the Temple College Regulation Faculty and an knowledgeable in reproductive well being legislation, mentioned about abortion drugs. “So I feel that is what’s going to occupy legislators’ and advocates’ consideration within the coming years.”