Originally published at National Catholic Register
Chemical abortions currently account for about half of the abortions that are done in the United States every year.
Pro-life groups are criticizing a burgeoning effort to expand use of the abortion pill through pharmacist prescriptions, slamming what one advocate called an effort at “chipping away at medical standards for women.”
A pilot program launched this month in Washington state has trained pharmacists to prescribe the abortion-drug combo mifepristone and misoprostol to women seeking abortions.
The initiative — launched by the pro-abortion group Uplift International and dubbed the “Pharmacist Abortion Access Project” — uses the online pharmacy Honeybee Health to distribute the drugs. Uplift said it plans to eventually expand the program in “brick-and-mortar pharmacies” as well.
The program “is expected to be tried in other states where abortion remains legal,” The New York Times reported this week.
Michael Hogue, the chief executive of the American Pharmacists Association, told the newspaper: “I think it is going to expand, and it is expanding.”
Abortions done via medication, also called chemical abortions, currently account for about half of the abortions that are done in the United States every year. Abortion drugs are used to end the life of an unborn child
