JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri (LifeSiteNews) — The state of Missouri filed a lawsuit this week against Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), on the grounds that the abortion giant is deceiving clients about the dangers of the abortion pill.
According to the July 23 press release, the office of Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey is accusing PPFA of violating the Missouri Merchandising Practices Act by calling chemical abortion drugs “safer than many other medicines like penicillin” and Tylenol, using that false claim to get them to obtain abortion drugs from Planned Parenthood locations and even “encourag[ing] women to conceal their abortion drug use from their own emergency medical providers, significantly increasing the risk of complications.”
“The lies must stop. We’re holding the national Planned Parenthood entity accountable for the lies it tells women in Missouri and across the nation,” Bailey said. “No one is above the law, not even Planned Parenthood.”
READ: 11% of women who take abortion pill suffer serious adverse events, largest known study finds
The lawsuit is seeking over $1.8 million in penalties, up to $1,000 in damages for every Missouri woman Planned Parenthood gave abortion pills over the last five years, reimbursement to Medicaid and similar government programs, and a court order ending the false claims.
Twelve states currently ban all or most abortions. But the abortion lobby is working feverishly to cancel out those deterrents with a variety of tactics, especially the unregulated, no-oversight distribution of contraceptive and abortion pills across state lines, regardless of the risks to the women they are purportedly serving.
In November 2022, Operation Rescue reported that a net decrease of 36 abortion facilities in 2022 led to the lowest number in almost 50 years, yet the chemical abortion business “surged” with 64 percent of new facilities built last year specializing in dispensing mifepristone and misoprostol. Citing data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, STAT says mifepristone “accounts for roughly half of all abortions in the U.S.”
This is despite the fact that a 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.” A recent Charlotte Lozier Institute study also found that most emergency room visits stemming from abortion pill complications are misattributed to miscarriages, further making the pills appear safer than they really are.
“A November 2021 study by Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” writes Catholic University of America research associate Michael New. “They analyzed state Medicaid data of over 400,000 abortions from 17 states that fund elective abortions through their Medicaid programs. They found that the rate of abortion-pill-related emergency-room visits increased over 500 percent from 2002 through 2015. The rate of emergency-room visits for surgical abortions also increased during the same time period, but by a much smaller margin.’”
Whether the issue will be resolved nationally remains to be seen. President Donald Trump has taken a number of pro-life actions since returning to office but said on the campaign trail that he would not enforce federal law prohibiting abortion pills from being dispensed by mail. Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has since promised a “complete review” of the medical risks of abortion pills.
Meanwhile, abortion is currently a state-level constitutional “right” in Missouri thanks to an amendment passed in November 2024, but the legislature is hopeful it can put a repeal amendment on the 2026 ballot.
