Kroger and Sam’s Club say ‘errors’ by ‘third party vendors’ listed abortion pill on their websites

Days after Live Action News originally broke the news that both Kroger and Sam’s Club were displaying the abortion pill mifepristone (200mg) — also known by its brand name, Mifeprex — for sale on their pharmacy websites, the grocery store giants have issued statements insisting that the drug was displayed for sale on their websites due to “errors” in drug listings by “third-party vendors,” which the pharmacies use to “aggregate medication pricing.”

After Live Action News broke the story on the presence of mifepristone on the Kroger pharmacy’s website, other outlets reported on the news, including The Washington Stand (TWS). An e-mail was then sent by Danielle Lewis Jones, Head of Communications for Kroger Health, to a senior editor at TWS, claiming that “The Kroger Company Family of Pharmacies do not carry Mifepristone, nor do we dispense it” and that “The Kroger Family of Pharmacies doesn’t carry Mifepristone and was listed on the Kroger Health Savings Club site in error. It has since been removed and we are requesting a retraction of Kroger’s inclusion in the story” (emphasis added).

This information was confirmed by LifeNews, which stated, “Danielle Lewis Jones, Head of Communications for Kroger Health, confimed [sic] to LifeNews today that Kroger is not selling the aboriton [sic] pill and the above listing was made in error by a third-party vendor that operates the Kroger Savings Club web site” (emphasis added).

This week, Live Action News also received communications from trusted sources stating that they had obtained information from Sam’s Club — which claimed that their pharmacy’s listing, too, had been due to an error with a third-party pharmacy tool. Live Action News sought to verify this information, and received a swift response from Allison Van Matre, Senior Director of Global Communications for Sam’s Club.

Van Matre provided the following statement “on behalf of the company” regarding whether or not Sam’s Club is selling the mifepristone abortion pill as was found on its pharmacy website: “We use a third-party vendor to aggregate medication pricing, and their tool provided incorrect information” (emphases added).

Kroger Health Savings and Sam’s Club websites previously displayed abortion pills 

Last week, Live Action News documented that the Kroger Health Savings website, which offers deep discounts on “popular” prescription drugs for members, was displaying the abortion pill (mifepristone) for sale. The grocery store chain’s website (see image below) stated that the drug “end[s] a pregnancy.”

A search of the archived link on December 18, 2024, shows the drug was listed on the Kroger website (but was removed after news coverage of the abortion drug’s listing came to light). Compare:

Live Action News also reported that Sam’s Club, a membership warehouse club which is a division of Walmart, Inc., was also showing the abortion pill as available on their pharmacy website (see image from the website at that time).

At that time, Sam’s Club Pharmacy offered this link — https://www.samsclub.com/pharmacy/rxsavings — to search drug pricing online. However, that link has since been been redirected to https://www.samsclub.com/pharmacy, where the ability to search drugs on the website has been removed.

The Family Research Council, which publishes The Washington Stand, tweeted a video of the news outlet’s editor-in-chief, Jared Bridges, on FRC’s Washington Watch, discussing how Live Action News’ original reporting on the story led TWS to look into and verify the information as well.

Though the tweet claims that it was “The Washington Stand’s reporting that led Kroger… to backtrack on selling the abortion drug mifepristone,” it is unclear at this time if Kroger has truly “backtrack[ed] on selling” the drug, or if the drug was, in fact, listed due to a third-party error, as Kroger Health claims.

“Do people have to worry about their local grocery store selling abortion drugs? That’s what’s at issue here,” Bridges said.

And indeed, it is an incredibly disturbing possibility that drugs intended to kill could be sold alongside everyday household needs.

While Live Action News has now updated our initial report regarding Kroger, we will continue to monitor the situation.

Sam’s Club claims third-party website tool was ‘incorrect’ 

Days after publishing our findings regarding Sam’s Club pharmacy, Live Action News was contacted by trusted pro-life sources who said they had either heard second-hand or directly from Sam’s Club that the warehouse club was not, at this current time, dispensing the abortion pill. They stated that Sam’s Club claimed the listing, like Kroger Health’s, was also the result of an error with a third-party vendor which lists drugs and drug prices on the Sam’s Club pharmacy website.

John Pisciotta, founder of Pro-life Waco, who has led the hometown outreach to protest CVS and Walgreens for dispensing abortion drugs, informed Live Action News by e-mail that he called Sam’s Club and the person he spoke with at the general contact phone number “was not caught off guard by my question.”

This — along with the swift response Live Action News received to our inquiry — seems to indicate that Sam’s Club has been receiving a number of calls about the drug due to media coverage.

Pisciotta felt that the Sam’s Club representative “seemed like she had received other calls and was prepared to deliver the official Sam’s Club message,” which was that a third-party vendor posted incorrect information, and that Sam’s Club was having that information removed. The representative reportedly assured Pisciotta more than once that no Sam’s Club pharmacies are selling the mifepristone abortion pill. Pisciotta said he felt “encouraged” by the response.

Live Action News has also updated our original report regarding Sam’s Club.

Why there is good reason to be watchful

Live Action News previously detailed how pharmacy chains are currently experiencing pressure to become certified to dispense the deadly abortion pill. In June of 2023, Democrat members of Congress pressed Walmart, Costco, Safeway, Kroger, and HealthMart to undergo the certification process to dispense mifepristone. Then, as Live Action News previously documented, in July of 2024, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander sent letters to pharmacy giants Walmart, Costco, Kroger, Albertsons, and McKesson, urging them to “[p]rovide abortion medication or risk losing investor confidence” and to “start dispensing mifepristone without delay.”

Following Lander’s demands upon the pharmacy chains, comptrollers from 15 states pushed back, calling the move “political.”

Live Action News obtained Kroger Health president Colleen Lindholz’s August 2024 response to Lander’s letter, which stated that Kroger was, at that time, “evaluating becoming REMS certified to dispense this product, including the logistics and as-yet unresolved legal landscape associated with that process, and commit to providing the highest level of care to our patients.”

In 2023, it was estimated that the abortion pill made up a whopping 63% of all abortions committed, totaling over 642,000. It was in January of that year that the Biden-Harris FDA had announced it would allow retail pharmacies to dispense the drug.

The latest published data by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reveals that since its approval in 2000 through the end of December 2022, “approximately 5.9 million women” have used the abortion pill mifepristone in the U.S. for “medical termination of pregnancy.” The drug is administered in a 200-milligram dosage, and is manufactured under the direction of Danco Laboratories, with the generic version under GenBioPro.

Live Action News will continue to monitor the situation regarding retail pharmacy dispensing of mifepristone.

Tell President Trump, RFK, Jr., Elon, and Vivek:

Stop killing America’s future. Defund Planned Parenthood NOW!