(Oregon Right to Life) — The state of Missouri last week filed a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood over its claims about the safety of the abortion pill mifepristone. The move comes as the FDA has pledged to review mifepristone following a new study indicating that over one in every ten women suffers a serious adverse event after taking the drug.
On July 21, Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey filed a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood, arguing that the nation’s largest abortion provider “is lying about the abortion pill to cut costs and boost revenue.”
Planned Parenthood claims that mifepristone, or chemical abortion, “is a safe and effective way to end a pregnancy of up to 11 weeks.” The abortion company also asserts that “it’s safer than many other medicines like penicillin, Tylenol, and Viagra.”
In his lawsuit, Bailey argued that the claim “is brazenly false.”
The oft-repeated comparison between mifepristone and Tylenol was recently analyzed and found inaccurate in a peer-reviewed article published in the scientific journal BioTech by the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute.
“A single dose of the abortion pill regularly lands women in the emergency room,” Bailey said in the lawsuit. “Not so for drugs like Tylenol, which are sold over the counter. The FDA label for the abortion pill (known as mifepristone) recognizes that up to 4.6% of women who take a single dose of the abortion pill end up in the emergency room. In sharp contrast, a single dose of Tylenol almost never has any appreciable negative effect. A single dose of Tylenol certainly does not send nearly 5% of individuals to the emergency room.”
The FDA label for mifepristone indicates an emergency room visit rate of 2.9% to 4.6% for women who take the drug, and a severe adverse event rate of 0.5%. However, a recent study by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) reviewing public and private insurance claims by 330 million U.S. patients indicated a 10.93% rate of serious adverse events, including sepsis, hemorrhage, and incomplete abortion (when the fetus is not fully expelled following his or her death).
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“Planned Parenthood has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars—all while women have been forced to seek emergency care because of the heightened risks of abortion pills compared to surgical abortions,” the lawsuit states, adding that “Planned Parenthood’s dishonest advertising violates Missouri’s consumer-protection law.”
In a statement, AG Bailey argued that the “national Planned Parenthood organization is actively endangering the lives of women and girls across the country by spreading lies and disinformation about the powerful chemical abortion drug.”
Bailey’s lawsuit seeks financial penalties from Planned Parenthood, under Missouri’s Merchandising Practices Act, in the amount of $1,000 per woman who has been impacted by the abortion business’s claims about mifepristone.
In a statement, National Right to Life praised the lawsuit and noted that it could result in “millions in restitution.”
“National Right to Life applauds Attorney General Bailey for taking decisive action to protect women and expose the dangerous disinformation being spread by Planned Parenthood about the abortion drug mifepristone,” National Right to Life president Carol Tobias said. “This isn’t a matter of political posturing—this is about truth and women’s health. It’s unconscionable for the abortion industry to prioritize revenue over the lives of women.”
“Thanks to Missouri’s bold leadership, we now have an opportunity to bring light to these dangers and ensure that women are fully informed about the dangers of mifepristone abortions,” Tobias said.
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Amid a climate of misinformation about the abortion pill and its harms, chemical abortions accounted for 63% of all abortions nationwide – up from 53% in 2020, according to 2023 data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.
The increase in chemical abortions coincides with the removal of regulations on the prescription and distribution of the abortion pill over the past decade.
In 2016, the FDA implemented a new policy that expanded the timeframe in which mifepristone could be prescribed during pregnancy. It also removed the requirement to report complications that do not result in death. In 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA permitted mifepristone to be prescribed online and distributed via mail. Local pharmacies were also authorized to dispense the drugs, and in January 2023, that permission was extended to retail pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS.
The recent EPPC study on the abortion pill’s dangers and the ongoing prevalence of the drug – thanks in large part to reduced federal guardrails – has led to a commitment by the Trump administration’s FDA to reexamine the drug’s alleged safety.
In June, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary pledged that he would carry out “a review of mifepristone” alongside “the professional career scientists at the Agency who review this data.”
Meanwhile, the lawsuit against Planned Parenthood comes as the abortion business was defunded by the federal government this month via the sweeping budget reconciliation bill that included a provision eliminating taxpayer funding Planned Parenthood – which receives approximately 40% of its annual revenue from federal grants and reimbursements – for one year.
Already facing financial setbacks and forced to close brick-and-mortar locations nationwide, Planned Parenthood estimates it will have to shutter nearly 200 more facilities across the country due to the loss of federal dollars, most of them in states where abortion is legal. On Thursday, Planned Parenthood Mar Monte announced that five Northern California locations were closing as a result of the federal defunding.
