It’s been an uphill battle for the abortion capsule (a little bit of a misnomer, because the process for a treatment abortion really consists of two tablets—mifepristone and misoprostol—taken in succession). In April of 2023, a Trump-appointed Texas choose suspended the Meals and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, with an appeals court docket finally ruling that the drug might stay in the marketplace with restrictions.

Now, in an encouraging signal for the way forward for abortion care within the US, CVS and Walgreens have introduced that they are going to quickly begin allotting mifepristone in states the place abortion remains to be authorized. (Among the many states this new coverage excludes are Texas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and practically a dozen others, all of which have enacted complete or near-total abortion bans.) Whereas sufferers have been beforehand pressured to select up mifepristone in individual at a hospital or different medical institution, a small variety of Walgreens pharmacies in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania will this week have the ability to dispense the drug in individual. (Misoprostol, which is used for quite a lot of medical functions along with its position in treatment abortion, is already obtainable in most pharmacies by prescription.)

A press release issued by CVS on Friday famous that the pharmacy chain would begin to fill mifepristone prescriptions in all of its Massachusetts and Rhode Island pharmacies within the “weeks forward,” with additional enlargement to states the place abortion is authorized “on a rolling foundation.” Whereas increasing abortion protection on the East and West Coasts does little to resolve the continuing public well being disaster created by lack of entry to reproductive care within the South, not less than it’s a begin that has the potential to take away some pink tape and stigma from the expertise of searching for an abortion.