Costco Refuses to Sell Abortion Pill After “Lack of Demand”

In welcomed news, after a year of internal discussion, Costco Corporation, the nationwide grocery giant, has decided against dispensing mifepristone—the abortion pill—at its more than 500 pharmacy locations.

In a statement released today, Costco said only that the decision was “based on the lack of demand from our members and other patients.”

Other pharmacies, “like Walgreens and CVS have chosen to dispense the abortion pill,” according to Carole Novielli. “Kroger and Sam’s Club clarified in late 2024 that their pharmacies were not selling the abortion pill mifepristone, and that any appearance to the contrary was due to a third-party error.”

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a key pro-life player that brought pressure to bear on Costco, said

We applaud Costco for doing the right thing by its shareholders and resisting activist calls to sell abortion drugs. Retailers like Costco keep their doors open by selling a lifetime of purchases to families, both large and small. They have nothing to gain and much to lose by becoming abortion dispensaries. Retail pharmacies exist to serve the health and wellness of their customers, but abortion drugs like mifepristone undermine that mission by putting women’s health at risk.

Jeff Green and Jessica Nix reported that Michael Ross, legal counsel for the corporate engagement team at Alliance Defending Freedom “said the group will now focus on Walgreens Boots Alliance and CVS Health Corp., which dispense mifepristone in pharmacies in states where abortion is legal.”

Get the latest pro-life news and information on X (Twitter). Follow @LifeNewsHQ

Praveena Somasundaram, who writes for the Washington Post, provided much needed background.

The battle over whether mifepristone would be sold in retail pharmacies began in March 2024, when CVS and Walgreens received FDA certification to sell the pill.

Four months later, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander sent letters to a handful of other household-name pharmacies, urging them to follow in the footsteps of CVS and Walgreens. In his letters to Costco, Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons and McKesson, Landers reminded the companies that New York City’s pension system owned shares in them. The shares in Costco alone at the time were valued at $443.9 million.

Getting certified to dispense the pill, Lander wrote to Costco CEO Ron Vachris, “aligns with both long-term shareholder interests and women’s health care needs.”

In other words, Lander tried to leverage the city’s huge pension funds to force Costco’s hand. But pro-life opponents swiftly responded.

A coalition of groups and individual investors sent letters to the same five companies. At the time, their stock in Costco was worth about $56 million. Thousands of Costco members and investors also signed a petition saying they did not want the company to sell mifepristone, an effort spearheaded by Inspire Investing, a Christian financial firm that is part of the coalition.

As pressure from investors mounted, Costco indicated it did not plan to become certified to sell mifepristone, citing customer interest.

It is significant that Amazon does not currently offer mifepristone.

The battle over the abortion pill only grows more intense. Approved for use by the FDA in 2000, the regimen for mifepristone included, among other requirements, that it would be used only through 10 weeks of pregnancy.

However, the FDA also required that the drug be picked up in person.

In 2021, the Biden FDA halted the in-person requirement and, following the 2022 Dobbs decision, blue states passed “shield” laws designed to protect abortion providers from prosecutions.

Twenty-two states have enacted abortion shield laws. “Generally, states with abortion shield laws will refuse to extradite abortionists and won’t enforce judgments or penalties from another state,” Kate Quiñones reports

As we’ve reported numerous times, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is one of those leading the charge.

In 2024 Paxton sued New York abortionist Margaret Carpenter, co-director of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT), who mailed abortion pills to a Texas woman which resulted in the death of an unborn child and serious medical complications for the mother.

Last month, for the second time, Acting Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck (New York) said he would not grant Texas’ motion that sought to enforce the order of State District Judge Bryan Gantt of Collin County District Court in Texas to Carpenter to pay a penalty of over $100,000 and to stop sending abortion pills into Texas. In March, Bruck had refused an initial request to file the judgment.

He was solidly backed by pro-abortion New York Gov. Kathy Hoch.

“Dr. Carpenter is a radical abortionist who must face justice, not get legal protection from New York liberals intent on ending the lives of as many unborn children as they can,” said Attorney General Paxton. “No matter where they reside, pro-abortion extremists who send drugs designed to kill the unborn into Texas will face the full force of our state’s pro-life laws.”

Earlier this year, grand jurors in West Baton Rouge Parish indicted Carpenter for prescribing an abortion pill online to a minor teenage girl in Port Allen, Louisiana.

District Attorney Tony Clayton said a warrant was issued for the arrest of Carpenter. “The daughter wanted the pregnancy and had a reveal party planned,” the district attorney said, according to The Advocate.

“The young child was told by the mother that she had to take the pill or else. The child took the pill was home alone… felt something happening to her body and began hemorrhaging, and the baby began to come out,” Chris Nakamoto reported.

“It’s the law of Louisiana. Gov. Landry, AG Liz Murrill, and our legislature has seen fit that abortions are illegal in this state,” Clayton said. “Shipping an abortion pill from another state is equivalent to me of shipping fentanyl or any other type of drug over here that ends up in the mouths and stomachs of our minor kids.”

Gov. Hochul again invoked the state’s shield law in rejecting a request to extradite Carpenter to Louisiana.

In a new and potential significant wrinkle, last month a Galveston, Texas man sued a California doctor in federal court for allegedly mailing his girlfriend abortion pills.

“The lawsuit—a civil complaint filed in the federal court for the Southern District of Texas—accuses a physician named Remy Coeytaux of violating state and federal laws by mailing abortion pills to ‘murder’ the ‘unborn child’ of the plaintiff, Jerry Rodriguez,”   O’Connell-Domenech reported for The Hill.

Previous legal challenges were filed in state court.

Along the way the very important Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) safety requirements for mifepristone were badly diluted. In response, NRLC submitted formal comments to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, calling on the FDA not to eliminate what few REMS remain in place and to reverse the approval of this dangerous abortion drug.

“Despite decades of evidence showing the dangers of mifepristone, abortion advocates are pushing to strip away even the minimal safeguards that remain,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “The REMS protocols exist because this drug can cause life-threatening complications—including hemorrhage, sepsis, and undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy—and eliminating these protections would be reckless and politically motivated.”

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.

The post Costco Refuses to Sell Abortion Pill After “Lack of Demand” appeared first on LifeNews.com.