Online retailer Amazon is limiting how many emergency contraceptives people can buy, joining other retailers who put in place similar caps following the US Supreme Court decision overruling Roe v. Wade.
Amazon’s limit, which temporarily caps purchase of the contraceptives at three units per week, went into effect on Monday, a spokesperson for the e-commerce giant confirmed.
The company did not share details on what emergency contraceptive products were limited for purchase, but a listing showed the cap applied to Plan B, the popular “morning after” pill.
Photo: AFP
A similar policy went into effect on Monday at the US drugstore chain Rite Aid, which has limited the purchase of Plan B pills to three units per customer due to increased demand, a company spokesperson said.
The limit applies to in-store and online purchases.
Emergency contraception is different from abortion pills used to end a pregnancy. Plan B, which can be obtained without a prescription, contains a concentrated dose of the same drug found in many regular birth control pills. If a woman takes Plan B within 72 hours of unprotected sex, she can lower the risk of pregnancy significantly.
Limiting purchases is standard practice that helps retailers prevent stockpiling and reselling at higher prices.
“Retailers are being cautious. They are trying to manage it,” GlobalData Retail managing director Neil Saunders said. “But I don’t think there are chronic shortages.”
Walmart, Amazon’s top competitor, has capped online purchases of Plan B to 10 units, although it is unclear when the purchase limit began. The retailer does not have in-store limits, but managers might make changes to help ensure availability based on the demand.
“Many of our products have online purchase limits in place,” a Walmart spokesperson said. “During times of fluctuating demand, these limits may change.”
CVS Health said that it removed its own caps on emergency contraceptives after it installed a temporary limit following last week’s high court ruling.
The company said that it had been seeking to preserve access to the products following a “sharp increase” in sales, which have since returned to normal levels.
“We continue to have ample supply of emergency contraceptives to meet customer needs,” CVS Health spokesman Matthew Blanchette said.
The pharmacy chain Walgreens is still able to meet demand for in-store purchases and curbside pickup of over-the-counter emergency contraception pills, but spokeswoman Emily Mekstan said that the company is restocking its ship-to-home business, which saw a surge in demand.
CVS Health and Walgreens are the two biggest US drugstore chains. They operate about 19,000 locations combined.
Spokespeople for Target and Kroger said they did not have anything to share on potential limits on contraceptive purchases.
See ABORTION on page 9
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
CYBERCRIME, TRAFFICKING: A ‘pattern of state failures’ allowed the billion-dollar industry to flourish, including failures to investigate human rights abuses, it said Human rights group Amnesty International yesterday accused Cambodia’s government of “deliberately ignoring” abuses by cybercrime gangs that have trafficked people from across the world, including children, into slavery at brutal scam compounds. The London-based group said in a report that it had identified 53 scam centers and dozens more suspected sites across the country, including in the Southeast Asian nation’s capital, Phnom Penh. The prison-like compounds were ringed by high fences with razor wire, guarded by armed men and staffed by trafficking victims forced to defraud people across the globe, with those inside subjected to punishments including shocks from electric batons, confinement
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the