Banning abortion nationwide (again)

Author

Kay W.
August 16, 2025

Just awful: Bloomberg reports that Costco has caved to anti-abortion activists, agreeing not to carry or dispense abortion pills at its 500 pharmacies across the country.

Costco claims the decision was made because they haven’t seen demand for the pills, and didn’t comment on the long-standing anti-abortion campaign targeting the company. Conservative groups, however, made it very clear that this was their doing.

Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal group responsible for the end of Roe, said in a release that they were “honored to work alongside the many like-minded partners who made this moment possible.” Students for Life also took a victory lap, crediting their “Halt Pharmacy Abortions” campaign.

Abortion, Every Day has been tracking this campaign for a while now: led by the American Family Association, anti-abortion groups have been pressuring not just Costco—but Walmart, Kroger, and other pharmacy chains. (Despite conservatives’ best efforts, CVS and Walgreens have already agreed to dispense mifepristone.)

Valenti has contacts for Costco so customers can complain. She also urges us to cancel our memberships. We have a Costco membership - it was great with four kids but honestly, we don’t use it much anymore - there is no set of circumstances where I need two quarts of peanut butter or two gallons of olive oil, so canceling would not be a big sacrifice for me. Still, I don’t think canceling in this instance is a good tactic. Isn’t your membership the leverage? If you up and cancel it, that leverage is gone. I will call though- I also have the Costco CITI credit card - which I love for travel- so I’ll threaten on that too.

On the political end of the abortion issue, I have noticed Democrats are no longer talking about it. I think this is a mistake. While I know a (bare) majority of white women voted for Trump, college educated women are, as a group, very, very good for Democrats. And there are a LOT of us:

Overall, men voted for Trump by 11 points (43 percent Harris – 54 percent Trump), a 9 point swing from 2020 when Trump won by 2 points. Women voted for Harris by 6 points (51 percent Harris – 45 percent Trump), a 4 point swing from 2020, when Biden won these voters by 10 points. 

The issue doesn’t have to be important to anyone other than women who vote for Democrats, and that’s enough for Democrats to focus on it, because if Democrats lose their edge among women they simply won’t win another election. Kowtow to your base, Democrats, for once in your fucking lives have our backs.

The Right’s new campaign to go after abortion medication nationalizes the abortion issue again - whether you live in a red state or a blue state, they’re going to make it impossible for women to access abortion. That’s a political gift to Democrats.

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