WATCH: Live Action comedy video calls out struggling pharmacies for selling abortion pill

The newest comedy sketch from Live Action satirizes pharmacies that announced their plans to dispense the abortion pill, only to find that it didn’t result in a financial windfall. In the video, an actor playing a CVS executive presses his team to find out what is causing company performance to plunge across the industry.

“All right, people, this is an emergency,” he begins. “Sales are plummeting. We are all shuttering thousands of stores. Now, Rite Aid has just come out of bankruptcy, but it’s still looming for Walgreens, and for us, CVS. Though we are enemies, we are all suffering the same fate. So, what is going on, and what can we do to stop it?”

Who Knew K*lling People Was Bad for Business?

After brainstorming several possible reasons — the COVID-19 pandemic, illegally filling opioid prescriptions, rising inflation — another executive timidly offers a suggestion. “I, um… this is just more of a brainstorming thought, but, um… I think part of the reason why, uh, people decided to turn against our brands was because we were killing babies,” the executive says. “It was after we announced that we were selling abortion pills in early 2023.”

The other executives react with disgust, hostility, and disdain to this idea, but the executive continues to press the issue, holding up a chart which shows an exaggerated drop in company performance. “If you could just look at this chart, um, it shows a, uh, drastic decrease in performance right around early 2023,” he continues. The other executives continue to ignore him, though he refuses to remain silent — even as the other executives talk over him, call him crazy, and more.

While the chart shown in the video is a satirical exaggeration, it is true that these pharmacies — CVS, Rite Aid, and Walgreens — have been struggling to remain viable. Of course, it cannot be proven that choosing to dispense abortion pills is the cause of the decline in sales — this is a satire video, after all, and it is likely that there are many contributors to the decline — but it is an interesting idea to ponder.

The U.S. Sun reported in February 2025:

CVS has shut 900 stores over the past three years, with plans underway to close another 270 this year alone.

Announcing the closures, CVS blamed a number of factors including consumer behavior changes, population shifts and pharmacy density.

“We’re closing locations strategically to better meet consumers’ health, wellness and pharmacy care needs — as announced more than three years ago — not in reaction to industry pressures,” CVS said. 

Walgreens has decreased its store count in the US by more than 1,000 stores over the past six years and has plans to shutter another 1,300 over the next three years.

Rite Aid is now in talks to sell to private equity firm Sycamore Partners, after exiting bankruptcy proceedings in September. 

A recent report released by the Ethics and Public Policy Center analyzing more than 865,000 mifepristone abortions taking place from 2017-2023 asserts that the “serious adverse events” rate for the abortion pill is 22 times higher than the FDA currently lists on the drug’s label — which means that one in 10 women who take the drug reportedly experience such complications. A recent press release from the conservative non-profit 1792 Exchange stated in regard to the high rate, “Parallels are being drawn to the opioid crisis, where aggressive marketing and under-communicated risks led to major legal consequences for pharmaceutical stakeholders.” The group recently sent a letter to pharmacy CEOs, making them aware of the EPPC report’s findings.

“You know, I don’t mean to be stuck on this, but what about all the bad attention?” the problematic executive asks in the video.”… I don’t think it’s a good association for any of us. I mean… pharmacists are leaving us left and right because they don’t want to give drugs that make women bleed out on bathroom floors and they have to look at their dead baby before they flush it down the toilet….”

Sadly, the part referencing seeing dead babies and flushing them isn’t a satirical exaggeration; women have testified that they saw their babies after taking the abortion pill, and it was traumatizing:

My Abortion Pill Story - Natalia - I Saw My Baby

Another executive, Josh, interrupts to say that isn’t how abortion pills work, only to reveal some… not-so-stellar things about his own character.

Live Action has released numerous comedy and satire videos, including one where a woman asks for organic abortion pills at CVS, one that portrays an awkward encounter between two dads at Walgreens, and one that lampoons corporations for their pro-abortion policies.