Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) hammered Costco on Friday for appeasing “far-right extremists,” after the retailer said earlier this week that its pharmacies would not dispense the abortion medication mifepristone.
“I am deeply alarmed by news reports that Costco is refusing to sell safe, effective, and legal medication for no other reason than to appease the politics of anti-abortion fanatics,” Murray said in a statement following the news. “I refuse to stand by and allow far-right extremists to bully major corporations and dictate what medicine women can or cannot get access to.”
“Where it is legal, retailers and major pharmacies must absolutely make medication abortion available to the women who need it,” the Washington Democrat added.
Costco, in its Thursday announcement, explained that the decision came from a “lack of demand.”
“Our position at this time not to sell mifepristone, which has not changed, is based on the lack of demand from our members and other patients, who we understand generally have the drug dispensed by their medical providers,” the company said, according to Reuters.
The decision comes after CVS and Walgreens announced last year that they received certification to provide the drug in states where abortion remains legal.
Murray pressed Costco to rescind its decision, warning that limiting access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortion, is harmful to women’s health.
“Mifepristone is safe and effective—we cannot live in a world where the availability of women’s health care whipsaws back and forth based on the whims of extremists who want to deny women access to basic health care,” she wrote Friday. “I am demanding that Costco immediately reverse course—follow the science and the facts, not the demands of far-right anti-abortion extremists.”
The Supreme Court in a decision last year ruled unanimously that a group of anti-abortion doctors did not have the legal basis to challenge access to the pill.
Despite the ruling, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary are weighing a review of the abortion pill.
Murray questioned Makary during his Senate confirmation hearing on the proposal, as well as President Trump’s moves to gut staff at the FDA.
