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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is allowing retail pharmacies to offer abortion pills in the United States for the first time, the agency said on Tuesday, as more states seek to ban medication abortion.
Pharmacies can apply for certification to distribute abortion pill mifepristone with one of the two companies that make it, and if successful they will be able to dispense it directly to patients upon receiving a prescription from a certified prescriber.
The FDA had first said it would be making those changes in December 2021 when it announced it would relax risk evaluation and mitigation strategies, or REMS, on the pill, that had been in place since the agency approved it in 2000 and were lifted temporarily by the government in 2021 due to the pandemic.
Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, the two companies that make the drug in the United States, submitted supplemental applications that have now been approved by the FDA.
