Pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens will begin selling mifepristone, an abortifacient drug, in stores in certain states in late March.

CVS will make the pill available in all its pharmacies in Massachusetts and Rhode Island this month, while Walgreens will sell mifepristone in a small number of storefronts in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, the New York Times reported Friday.

Fraser Engerman, a Walgreens spokesman, told the Times that the chain is “beginning a phased rollout in select locations to allow us to ensure quality, safety, and privacy for our patients, providers, and team members.”

Engerman said Walgreens will not sell the pill “in states where the laws are unclear” — states Kansas, Montana, and Wyoming, which have enacted comparatively strict laws surrounding abortion that currently face legal challenges.

CVS spokeswoman Amy Thibault told the Times that her organization will “dispense mifepristone in any state where it is or becomes legally permissible to do so.”

Several states have laws on the books specifically restricting access to abortifacient drugs, including Texas, where the pills are banned at seven weeks of gestation, and Indiana, where they are prohibited at the ten-week mark.

While the Food and Drug Administration approved the use of mifepristone in 2000, doctors have to this point been required to obtain specific permission to prescribe it. The pill had previously been accessible only through these doctors and through abortion clinics that ship the drug through the mail, but a January 2023 FDA regulatory change now allows pharmacies to apply to become certified to offer the pill.

The United States Supreme Court agreed in December to hear the Biden administration’s appeal of a lower-court ruling that restricted access to mifepristone. A group of Texas doctors and pro-life activists filed a legal challenge to the FDA’s new rules, and the 5th circuit court ruled in their favor during the summer of 2023, holding that the FDA had acted unlawfully when it lowered its safety standards for the drug in 2016 during the Obama administration and again in January 2023 under President Joe Biden.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue a decision on the mifepristone case by the end of June.