Massachusetts governor: Pharmacies must stock abortion pills

BOSTON (AP) — The governor of Massachusetts reminded pharmacies Wednesday that they’re required to inventory a key abortion capsule, regardless of a nationwide effort by anti-abortion activists to ban the medicine.

The motion comes as a federal decide in Texas is contemplating a lawsuit that may overturn decades-old federal approval of the drug.

Democratic Gov. Maura Healey issued a written assertion citing steering from the state board overseeing pharmacies that claims they need to keep “a steady, enough provide of all household planning drugs, together with mifepristone, misoprostol, emergency contraception, and contraceptive prescriptions.”

Misoprostol can be used as an abortion drug.

Healey mentioned Massachusetts will all the time shield abortion entry.

“At a time when states are dashing to ban medicine abortion and a few pharmacies are irresponsibly proscribing entry to it, we’re reminding Massachusetts pharmacies that they’ve an obligation to supply important reproductive well being drugs,” Healey mentioned within the assertion.

Medical abortion is the nation’s most typical methodology for ending pregnancies. Massachusetts in 2020 handed a regulation increasing entry to abortion within the state.

If U.S. District Decide Matthew Kacsmaryk guidelines towards the Meals and Drug Administration within the Texas instances, it’s unclear how shortly entry to mifepristone might be curtailed. Revoking or suspending approval of a drug after greater than 20 years would even be an unprecedented problem to the company.

Greater than a dozen states banned abortion after the Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade final yr.

Healey mentioned yielding to what she described as “coercive ways” will additional “strip pregnant folks of their company and rights and can violate the accountability of pharmacies and pharmacy departments to supply important healthcare companies.”