The Los Angeles Post

Feds tell pharmacists to provide prescribed meds

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The Biden administration on Wednesday said retail pharmacies and pharmacists must provide patients with the medication they were legally prescribed even if it could be used in an abortion.

 

The guidance to about 60,000 retail pharmacies from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) comes amid reports of pharmacists turning away women seeking abortion medication, or even medication used primarily to treat other ailments but that can cause abortions.

 

“The Department is committed to improving maternal health—including for individuals who experience miscarriages—and vigorous enforcement of our civil rights laws is one way in which we plan to do so,” the guidance stated.

  • This can include mifepristone, used in combination with misoprostol, to assist with a first-trimester miscarriage. Those drugs are also used in medication abortion, which is now illegal in some states.
  • Pharmacists must dispense methotrexate, a common drug used to treat rheumatoid arthritis or other autoimmune conditions. The drug is also used
    off-label to end ectopic pregnancies, causing it to be restricted in some states.

Guidance only: HHS is reminding pharmacists of existing law; they’re not making any new policy, only interpreting what’s already on the books. But as states move to outlaw and restrict abortion, federal and state laws will diverge, and the result will likely be determined on a case-by-case basis.