The demonstrations aim to bring the same chants, signs and tense confrontations to drug store parking lots that groups have long used to try to deter visits to abortion clinics.
Michael Dwyer/AP Photo

As legislatures reconvene this month — many for the first time since Roe v. Wade was overturned — Missouri and Kansas are among several states weighing bans on mail delivery and pharmacy dispensing of mifepristone, the first of two pills used to terminate a pregnancy.

Members of the new House Republican majority will also put forward a bill on Wednesday, first shared with POLITICO, that would expand the rights of pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for the drug.

And conservative advocates are threatening legal action against pharmacies that opt to dispense the pill as other pending lawsuits seek to ban their use nationwide.

“If Walgreens wants to learn anything from more than 50 years of our abortion activism, it’s that we will not give up,” said Kristi Hamrick, the vice president of policy for Students for Life of America. “They should be concerned about the kind of liability they will face.”

These conservative plans threaten to curtail what progressives call an already limited effort to expand access to abortion — and discourage patients from seeking the pills even if pharmacies opt to provide them.

Progressive lawmakers and abortion-rights advocates initially cheered the FDA’s January announcement, saying it could make the drugs more widely available, even as more states move to impose restrictions. They also expressed hope that the policy could reduce stigma around the use of the pills by treating them more like other prescription medications.

But as details of the policy came to light, many on the left raised concerns that its impact would be limited for several reasons, including low participation from pharmacies due to red tape, cost to patients, and new state laws targeting the pills’ distribution.

The FDA’s updated rules for the drugs require pharmacies to obtain an additional certification, and both the American Pharmacists Association and the National Community Pharmacists Association said it’s too early to know how many pharmacists will jump through those hoops and risk being targeted by anti-abortion groups.

Progressive lawmakers and abortion-rights advocates initially cheered the FDA’s January announcement, saying it could make abortion medication more widely available.