California’s woke Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom was forced to shamefully backtrack on a threat he made to try to blackmail a retail pharmacy chain into succumbing to abortion.

Last month, Walgreens made headlines by deciding it would refuse to sell abortion-inducing drugs in states where abortion is restricted or banned. That’s unlike CVS and other chains that seek to keep selling mifepristone and other pills for chemical abortions.

After this, Newsom declared his state would stop “doing business” with Walgreens and any firm that endangers women’s lives and “cowers to extremists.”

Newsom then stated California would refuse to renew a contract with Walgreens worth $54 million in order to punish the pharmacy chain. The Democrat also boasted that California’s economy was huge and could do without Walgreens.

He insisted on the left’s “moral superiority.” Newsom then claimed the company was being bullied by anti-abortion activists.

Yet, the weakling Democrat governor’s threat has come to nothing. It has become clear that had Newsom acted as he vowed, it would have hurt the prescription medications of 15 million Californians, LifeNews reported.

Thus, in an apparent embarrassment for Newsom, several representatives of his administration admitted last week that he backtracked on his plan to punish Walgreens.

One of them, Tony Cava from California’s health department, said this in a release.

Cava claimed the state “has no intention” of going for any action which could potentially “violate federal Medicaid requirements” or leave low-income people without medication access.

An estimate by Live Action News says that some 15 million Californians would have been affected if Newsom had torn up the state’s contract with Walgreens – not to mention that he would likely have broken federal law.

In 2022, California paid Walgreens a total of $1.5 billion for the prescriptions of Medicaid recipients.