CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Walmart rescinded a pharmacy policy that doctors said limited women’s access to a drug prescribed after miscarriages.
The retail giant had sent a memo to North Carolina pharmacists on Aug. 1, outlining new dispensing policies for the drug misoprostol, which can be used with another medication to induce abortions and for managing other unrelated health conditions, including miscarriages.
The guidance instructed pharmacists to confirm the medication was not ordered for an abortion, the News & Observer reported last month. The policy stigmatized women who needed the medication for miscarriages, several Triangle doctors said. Furthermore, legal experts said the policy was a misinterpretation of state abortion law.
Last week, Walmart walked back its policy after the executive director of the North Carolina Board of Pharmacy advised the company that the law on which it based its policy “had no application to pharmacists or the practice of pharmacy.”
In a company memo sent to North Carolina pharmacies on Friday, Walmart said pharmacists no longer have to ask the patient or prescribing doctor how the misoprostol would be used before filling the prescription.
A Walmart spokesperson said the August policy was intended to bring the company’s pharmacies in line with a 2013 North Carolina law that requires prescribing doctors to be with their patients when “the first drug or chemical is administered” during a medication-induced abortion.
However, the statute requires doctors to be present while the medication is “administered” not when it is “dispensed,” a crucial legal difference given that pharmacists do not administer drugs like misoprostol, the News & Observer reported.
“There’s no state statute of which I am aware that would prevent a pharmacy in North Carolina from dispensing misoprostol, ”Jay Campbell, executive director of the North Carolina Board of Pharmacy, told the N&O last month.
A group of congressional representatives from North Carolina called on Walmart last week to rescind the pharmacy policy, which they wrote subjects patients to “intrusive and potentially traumatizing inquisitions” from pharmacists.
Walmart had been in communication with the North Carolina Pharmacy Board in the last month to confirm the company’s interpretation of state law, said Bruce Harris, Walmart vice president of federal government affairs, in a letter to the representatives.
Campbell reiterated his position — that the state law does not apply to pharmacies — on Friday to the company.
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