Gavin Newsom Says California to End Business Ties With Walgreens Due to Abortion Pills

California Governor Gavin Newsom has severed the state's business ties with the pharmaceutical chain Walgreens after it announced last week that it will not be selling abortion pills by mail to 20 consecutive-led states.

KRON 4 News reported that Walgreens' decision came after attorneys general in the 20 states warned the company and pharmacy chain CVS that they could face legal consequences if they sold abortion pills by mail to those states.

Newsom responded to the news by tweeting and attaching a CNN report on the matter. He tweeted: "California won't be doing business with Walgreens or any company that cowers to extremists and puts women's lives at risk... We're done."

California Gov. Gavin Newsom Reacts After Walgreens Stopped Distribution of Abortion Pills

Walgreens said on Friday that it will not distribute abortion medication in 20 states due to pressure from anti-abortion lawmakers and lawsuits targeting the legality of abortion pills.

According to CNN, the pharmaceutical company noted that they intend to be a certified pharmacy and will only distribute mifepristone in areas where it is legal and operationally feasible.

A spokesperson for Rite Aid said the pharmaceutical company is monitoring the developments on federal, state, legal, and regulatory developments regarding mifepristone dispensing.

Rite Aid spokesperson Catherine Carter told CNN that the company will continue to evaluate its ability to dispense the abortion pills in accordance with those developments.

Anti-abortion advocates filed a lawsuit against the FDA in November, targeting the agency's two-decade-old approval of mifepristone. It is the first drug in the medication abortion process.

Medical abortion, which ends pregnancy through the use of medication, was also banned in some states after the Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade last year.

The FDA has allowed retail pharmacies to dispense mifepristone pills, including by mail, as long as they are certified under special safety rules for the drug.

The White House said it was "dangerous and unacceptable" for elected officials to target women's access to federally approved abortion pills, The Guardian reported.

More than half of abortions in the U.S. were done with medication abortion. It has caught increasing attention since Roe v. Wade was overturned.

U.S. Abortion Rights

Top human rights organizations are calling on the United Nations to intervene in the matter of abortion rights in the United States.

Around 200 organizations and experts wrote in a letter that some 22 million women and girls of reproductive age live in states where abortion access is now either banned or inaccessible.

The signatories include Global Justice Center, Pregnancy Justice, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch.

A huge coalition of groups and individual advocates for human rights and racial and economic justice also joins the organizations.

The legal director of the Global Justice Center, Christine Ryan, told The Guardian that the U.S. must be "castigated on the world stage" for its policies addressing the women, girls, and others who can be pregnant.

Ryan added that the scale and intensity are "unfathomable" regarding the human rights violations the United States is pushing on its population.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: California Governor Says State Won't Do Business With Walgreens Over Abortion Pill Decision - From CBS Evening News