Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford speaks to the Las Vegas Sun editorial board Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022.
Thursday, Feb. 16, 2023 | 11:53 a.m.
Attorneys general from 24 states, including Nevada, signed a letter Thursday applauding two of the largest pharmacy chains in the U.S. for offering drugs to terminate early term pregnancies.
The letter said the move expands reproductive care for millions of women.
Last month, CVS and Walgreens announced they would begin offering mifepristone and misoprostol after federal regulators cleared the way for pharmacies to dispense the drugs via mail.
The drugs have been federally approved since 2000 and are most often used for terminating pregnancies under 10 weeks gestation, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website.
They can also be used to treat miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies and gastric ulcers.
In their letter, the attorneys general noted the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the federal right to abortion last year. That ruling was followed by efforts in many states to ban surgical abortions and block access to medicated abortions.
“In the current climate, when there is a concentrated effort to roll back the rights we have been accustomed to for generations, we welcome this decision from CVS and Walgreens,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a statement.
“There are some that have threatened legal repercussions to these companies, which is merely another effort to restrict the freedoms of Americans nationwide and to generate an aura of fear around reproductive health care,” Ford said.
Thursday’s letter was issued in response to a group of attorneys general who oppose access to medicated abortion and last month sent a letter to CVS and Walgreens warning of legal repercussions if the pharmacies went through with dispensing the drugs by mail.
The warning letter argues the pharmacies could be in violation of the Comstock Act of 1873, a series of laws that made it illegal to send “obscene, lewd or lascivious” or otherwise “immoral” or “indecent” materials via the U.S. Postal Service.
The act also included provisions banning mailing literature regarding restricting access to contraception and abortion.
Provisions prohibiting the latter were overturned by the courts for good in 1936, and although largely unenforced, some of the Comstock laws were never repealed, according to some academic articles and historians.
In the letter lauding CVS and Walgreens, officials said any effort to use Comstock laws to restrict mifepristone and misoprostol were “misguided” and disregarded more than a century of legal precedent.
“Since the early twentieth century, federal courts have repeatedly and consistently held that the Comstock Act does not categorically prohibit mailing items that can be used to terminate a pregnancy, and does not apply unless the sender intends the recipient to use them unlawfully,” the attorneys general wrote. “The antiquated legal theory the anti-abortion states attempt to revive is meritless and has been repeatedly and consistently rejected.”
Last week, Nevada Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas, introduced a bill that seeks legal protections for out-of-state abortion patients and abortion providers, shielding them from legal action in states where the procedure is outlawed.
The measure, Senate Bill 131, would codify an executive order issued by former Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, in June after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to overturn the landmark precedent establishing the right to an abortion in the 1973 case Roe v. Wade.
The bill will almost certainly clear both chambers of the Nevada Legislature, as Democrats hold a supermajority in the Assembly and a 13-8 edge in the Senate. The Nevada Assembly Democratic Caucus today signed on as co-sponsors of the bill.
Should it clear the Legislature, it would set up a possible clash with first-term Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, who changed his stance on overturning Sisolak’s executive order on the campaign trail.
Lombardo, who positioned himself as a pro-life candidate and earned endorsements from several anti-abortion groups, initially said if elected, he would overturn the executive order.
But when pressed about it in a debate with Sisolak in October, Lombardo changed his tune and committed to keeping the order in place.
It’s not clear if Lombardo supports the legislation. On Monday, Lombardo Communications Director Elizabeth Ray said the governor isn’t commenting on legislation until it can be signed into law.
“We’re not commenting on bills or BDRs (bill-draft requests) at this point, but we’ll monitor them as they work through the legislative process,” Ray said in a statement.
Nevada passed a measure in 1990 protecting abortion in the Silver State until 24 weeks gestation. The law could only be repealed if a voter initiative was passed.
