Walgreens and CVS plan to provide abortion pills following the Food and Drug Administrations rule change that broadens availability for the pills.

The Biden administration partially implemented the change last year, announcing it would no longer enforce a long-standing requirement that women pick up the medicine in person. Tuesday's action formally updates the drug's labeling to allow many more retail pharmacies to dispense the pills, so long as they complete a certification process.

In a statement, Walgreens said it intends to become a certified pharmacy under the program.

"We are working through the registration, necessary training of our pharmacists, as well as evaluating our pharmacy network in terms of where we normally dispense products that have extra FDA requirements and will dispense these consistent with federal and state laws," Walgreens stated.

The rule change’s impact has been blunted by numerous state laws limiting abortion broadly and the pills specifically. Legal experts foresee years of court battles over access to the pills, as abortion-rights proponents bring test cases to challenge state restrictions.

CVS said it plans to seek certification after reviewing the FDA's updated Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy drug safety program for mifepristone, the generic name of the drug.

"We plan to seek certification to dispense mifepristone where legally permissible following that review," CVS said in a statement.

For more than 20 years, the FDA labeling had limited dispensing to a subset of specialty offices and clinics, due to safety concerns. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA temporarily suspended the in-person requirement. The agency later said a new scientific review by agency staff supported easing access, concurring with numerous medical societies that had long said the restriction wasn't necessary.

Two drugmakers that make brand-name and generic versions of abortion pills requested the latest FDA label update. Agency rules require a company to file an application before modifying dispensing restrictions on drugs.

Danco Laboratories, which sells branded Mifeprex, said in a statement the change “is critically important to expanding access to medication abortion services and will provide healthcare providers” with another option for prescribing the drug.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called the update an “important step" forward.

“Although the FDA’s announcement today will not solve access issues for every person seeking abortion care, it will allow more patients who need mifepristone for medication abortion additional options to secure this vital drug,” the group said in a statement.

More than half of U.S. abortions are now done with pills rather than surgery, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

The FDA in 2000 approved mifepristone to terminate pregnancies of up to 10 weeks, when used with a second drug, misoprostol. Mifepristone is taken first to dilate the cervix and block the hormone progesterone, which is needed to sustain a pregnancy. Misoprostol is taken 24 to 48 hours later, causing the uterus to contract and expel pregnancy tissue.

Bleeding is a common side effect, though serious complications are very rare. The FDA says more than 3.7 million U.S. women have used mifepristone since its approval.

Several FDA-mandated safety requirements remain in effect, including training requirements to certify that prescribers can provide emergency care in the case of excessive bleeding. Pharmacies that dispense the pills also need a certification.

America has an opioid problem and more mothers are struggling with sobriety.

“At the height of my addiction, I could take anywhere from 20 or 30 Percocets a day if I had them,” said Amanda Martin, who’s opioid addiction started shortly after the death of a child.

“My third born son died shortly after he was born and that just made a huge impact on me,” Martin said.

During her fourth and fifth pregnancies, Martin, a former nurse, started taking pain pills which she says impacted her other children’s health.

“They both had delayed speech patterns,” she said. “My youngest son that I took the most opiates with, he did have some developmental delays.”

Martin’s opioid addiction eventually led to heroin use and ultimately put her in jail.

New research shows during the past two decades, four times as many pregnant women are struggling with opioid use disorder and almost eight times as many infants are diagnosed with opioid withdrawal.

Now, health experts say that many are having a hard time getting proper treatment.

“Hospitals are providing variable care,” said Stephen Patrick, MD, director of the Vanderbilt Center for Child Health Policy. "And we see systems in communities really stretched, everything from local community hospitals to the child welfare system."

He says every 15 minutes in America, an infant is born having an opioid withdrawal, which accounts for half a billion dollars in healthcare expenditures nationwide.

“This year it looks like we’re on record pace once again to have to have a record-number of opioid overdoses,” Patrick said.

While the COVID-19 crisis has made it harder for pregnant women to get into treatment, Patrick says this is a fixable problem, but that America currently lacks to funding and political will to change it.

“As we start to usher in a new administration, I really hope the unique needs of pregnant women and infants affected by the opioid crisis are front and center,” he said.

More help is something Martin agrees with, especially during the COVID crisis.

“We see a lot of people coming in that are relapsing just simply because of the pandemic,” said Martin.

Now three-and-a-half years sober, Martin is working as a recovery coach for Vertava Health in Mississippi and encouraging pregnant moms battling opioid addiction to get help, no matter how hard it may be.

“There’s help out there,” she said. “And there’s non-judgmental places that you can come and you can get your whole life together and never have to live that way.”

The pandemic year that will go down in history set records for stress, worry, anger and sadness among both men and women worldwide, according to a new planetary survey of emotions in 2020.

Stress levels rose the most, with a "record-high 40% of adults worldwide" saying they experienced stress "a lot of the previous day," according to Gallup's 2021 Global Emotions Index. That was the highest level in the 15 years, the report said.

Globally, women with young children at home bore the brunt of the stress, worry, anger and sadness that people experienced during the pandemic of 2020.

Stress increased in half of the 116 countries surveyed, with "double-digit increases in stress in 21 countries," the report said. That means almost 190 million more people worldwide experienced significant stress last year than in years past.

Sickness and death from COVID-19 was obviously a huge part of the stress and negative emotions, as was the economic impact of the pandemic, the survey found.

"Half of those working at the time of the pandemic said they earned less money because of COVID-19, and 32% of people said they lost their job," Jon Clifton, Gallup's global managing partner, wrote in his opening statement on the survey.

"In all, 80% of people said COVID-19 affected them in some way."

Not every country experienced stress during 2020, the report noted. It ranged from a high of 66% in Peru, "which represents a new high for the country," to a "low of 13% in Kyrgyzstan, where stress levels have historically been low and stayed low in 2020," the report said.

A negative trend continues

For 15 consecutive years, polling giant Gallup has asked people around the world about their positive and negative emotions. For this report, Gallup surveyed nationally representative samples of 160,000 people from 116 countries during 2020 and early 2021.

Just as it did in 2019, Iraq led the world on the negative experience index in 2020. Gallup found 56% of Iraqis said they experienced pain, 51% reported anger and 50% reported sadness.

Taiwan scored lowest on the negative emotion index, the same ranking it attained in 2019.

Globally, the increase in negative emotions actually began 10 years ago, the report said. One key reason is political and economic upheaval. Partly for those reasons, people in Lebanon and Turkey reported few positive experiences in the survey.

"The majority of Lebanese people have not experienced enjoyment in their daily lives since 2018, and for Turks, this has been true since 2017," the report said.

Besides political and economic turmoil, another reason for negativity in many nations was a growing belief that both governments and businesses are corrupt.

"Majorities of people believe corruption is widespread in the governments of 79 out of 101 countries and areas in the world, and a majority in 85 out of 110 countries think this is true of businesses," Clifton wrote in his introductory remarks.

Income inequality is another factor in how people view their lives, Clifton continued: "Many countries that report high income inequality also happen to be the countries that report a lot of negative emotions, such as anger."

Resilience still prevailed

While negative emotions rose, many people in the world showed surprising resilience, the survey found. For their positive emotion index, the polling group asked questions about feeling respected and well-rested, doing interesting or enjoyable activities, and smiling and laughing.

Results showed that globally, humankind managed to remain stable in positive emotions despite the negative impact of the pandemic — with the exception of laughing and smiling.

"In the span of a year, the percentage of people who said they smiled or laughed a lot the previous day dropped from 75% to 70%, which is also the lowest measure Gallup has ever recorded for this question," the report said.

El Salvador led the world in positivity, with an index score of 82. Latin American countries have traditionally dominated the positive index, and Nicaragua, Paraguay and Colombia also had high scores. Three Nordic countries, Iceland, Norway and Finland — who are traditionally in the top 10 on rankings of national happiness — also had high scores.

The United States did not rank in the top 10 in positivity. But Gallup interviews done for the survey in early 2021, around the time vaccines were being approved, found people's ratings of their lives rebounded and hit "new all-time highs," the report said.