The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday paved the way for retail pharmacies to dispense abortion pills. Previous requirements said that mifepristone—part of the two-drug regimen approved in the U.S. to induce abortion—could only be dispensed at a specially certified health care provider's office or, in recent years, via mail-order pharmacies.
An FDA policy change in 2021 removed this in-person requirement and said pharmacies could dispense the drug if they were certified. But the agency did not then put in place a process for actually certifying pharmacies to do so.
