Missouri’s Anti-Abortion AG Wants to Sue All the Abortions Away

Andrew Bailey is suing Planned Parenthood for nearly $2 million, citing a bogus right-wing study that claims mifepristone isn't safe.

By Danielle Han  |  July 25, 2025 | 5:03pm
Twitter @AGAndrewBailey Politics
Missouri’s Anti-Abortion AG Wants to Sue All the Abortions Away

Andrew Bailey has chalked up a lot of controversy since taking office as Missouri’s attorney general in 2023. From trying to keep wrongfully convicted people in prison to positioning himself as a juridical proxy in Trump’s anti-DEI crusade, the man’s got a track record of using his office to fulfill a right-wing agenda (so much, in fact, that a running “Bailey tally” tracks his abuses of power).

And despite Missouri voting in November to protect abortion access, Bailey’s agenda includes attacking reproductive rights any chance he gets. In March, he subpoenaed the Missouri Abortion Fund to try and access patients’ private medical records. Now, his latest anti-abortion transgression involves using flawed science to try and take down Planned Parenthood.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, Bailey declares that “for years, Planned Parenthood Federation of America has been lying to Americans about the risks of abortion pills.” The document goes on to accuse the organization of routinely lying about the safety of mifepristone (the most commonly used pill for stopping pregnancies), saying a single dose “regularly lands women in the emergency room.”

Well, that’s just… not true. Most studies back up the safety of both mifepristone and misoprostol (the latter usually taken as a supplement to the former), and have proven the medication to be safer than Tylenol or Viagra. In 2024, the New York Times analyzed 100 scientific studies on the effectiveness and safety of both, finding “all conclude that the pills are a safe method for terminating a pregnancy.”

Now, it’s one thing to use misinformation to drive litigation–which is already fucked up. It’s another thing, however, to constantly overstep the legal boundaries of the office you’re elected into. As such, Bailey has a history of court-ordering his way into getting the anti-abortion policies he wants–by way of lawsuits. I mean, really, it’s giving coup.

Anti-abortion gronks such as Bailey are, of course, not going off of fact–but fine-print warnings mandated by FDA rules and papers with unchecked evidence. Most of Bailey’s court order aligns with a faulty study brimming with misinformation. Published by the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center earlier this year, “The Abortion Pill Harms Women” claims nearly 11% of women experience some “serious, adverse event” after taking mifepristone.

However, mifepristone isn’t just used in abortions, and the analysis broadly interpreted data that could have included women who took the drug for miscarriage treatment, or who were simply prescribed it, but never took it. Now, thanks to another anti-abortion freak, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who amplified the study, the FDA has pledged to re-review the safety of mifepristone (because what greener flag is there than a paper that’s been neither peer-reviewed nor published by any medical journal?).

Bailey is suing Planned Parenthood for nearly $2 million in penalties, alongside up to $1,000 in damages it allegedly inflicted on every Missouri woman who was provided the pills in the last five years. The filing also includes a court order that would stop mifepristone advertisements. (When Jezebel reached out to Bailey’s office for any additional commentary, a spokesperson pointed us to the general statement made on his website.)

Planned Parenthood’s Danika Severino Wynn has since condemned the move. “It is no surprise that this meritless lawsuit is being brought by an attorney general who has repeatedly spread lies and disinformation to push his own anti-abortion agenda…,” Wynn said in a statement to Bloomberg Law. “This case is about one thing: Attorney General Bailey once again trying to block safe, constitutionally-protected abortion access in Missouri.” 

Alas, Missouri loves company. And it seems Bailey loves misery.

 
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