While Costco (COST) stores are associated primarily with its bulk bargain deals on popular food items, the warehouse club stores also has approximately 550 pharmacies that customers use to obtain both brand-name and generic prescription medications and supplements.
The pharmacies additionally offer various common vaccines and the Costco Member Prescription Program, through which repeat customers can earn points and get discounts for their purchases.
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Amid a push from New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, Costco was at one point considering adding the abortion pill mifepristone to the hundreds of thousands other prescription drugs available at its pharmacies.
Approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) for use in the U.S. in 2000, the pill blocks the production of the progesterone hormone during the earliest stages of pregnancy and prevents the need for a surgical abortion at a later stage.
Costco will not sell mifepristone, citing “low demand”
Amid pressure from religious conservative activists, Costco shared that it would not sell mifepristone at its pharmacy locations across the U.S. and justified it as coming from a “lack of demand from our members and other patients.”
“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 retailer’s statement reads further.
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Even so, the move was immediately celebrated by groups that had long called for mifepristone to not be sold at Costco. The same group has also pressured big-box competitors such as Kroger (KR) , Walmart (WMT) , and CVS (CVS) to not sell the drug.
“We applaud Costco for doing the right thing”: ADF
“We applaud Costco for doing the right thing by its shareholders and resisting activist calls to sell abortion drugs,” the legal counsel for fundamental legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) said in an Aug. 14 statement.
“Retailers like Costco keep their doors open by selling a lifetime of purchases to families, both large and small. They have nothing to gain and much to lose by becoming abortion dispensaries.”
Another Iowa-based religious group, Inspire Investing, is also behind the push to not bring mifepristone to big-box pharmacy shelves.
In July 2024, the New York City Comptroller wrote a letter to the chief executives of Costco, Kroger, and Walmart to ask that they “take the necessary steps to receive certification” for the pill and improve access to women seeking an abortion in early stages.
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“By failing to become certified mifepristone dispensers, these pharmacy giants put both women’s reproductive health care and investors’ money at risk,” Lander wrote at the time.
Since the start of the Trump administration, Costco has been praised by liberals after its shareholders voted to reaffirm the chain’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in its hiring practices, despite pressure from Republican attorneys general in multiple states to scrap it.
The board of directors’ statements immediately prompted calls for a boycott from certain conservative customers. The controversy eventually got pushed into the background as new outcries and calls for boycotts of different brands emerged in the ensuing months.
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