Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey announced Thursday that he has filed a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood Great Plains (PPGP) for assisting minors with traveling out of state to obtain abortions without parental consent.
The 18-page complaint, filed Thursday in the 13th Judicial Circuit Court of Missouri, comes after an undercover investigative video published by Project Veritas in December appeared to show Planned Parenthood staff discussing how the organization assists out-of-state patients in arranging transportation to obtain abortions.
“Recently, officers, employees, or agents of PPGP admitted on video to an undercover reporter that PPGP ‘every day’ facilitates minors obtaining abortions without informed consent required by Missouri law,” the lawsuit states.
“The undercover reporter told PPGP’s managing directors, (identified in the video as ‘Lashauna’), and another of PPGP’s employees, (identified in the video as “Priscilla Jones”), he was seeking an abortion for a thirteen-year-old minor,” the lawsuit continues. “He wanted to know whether he could obtain an abortion for the 13-year-old without the girl’s parents finding out.”
“PPGP’s employees told the man that elective abortions are illegal in Missouri,
but they would help transport the 13-year-old girl across state lines to ‘our clinic’ in Kansas, and would ensure that the parents would not find out: ‘And they won’t. They won’t,'” the suit reads.
Attorney General Bailey’s lawsuit seeks a court order to block PPGP from transporting minors in and out of Missouri to obtain an abortion, or from paying for their transportation and lodging, as well as prohibiting PPGP from paying and referring patients for abortions.
The Missouri Attorney General’s Office said Thursday that the lawsuit comes as the culmination of a “multi-year campaign to drive Planned Parenthood from the State of Missouri because of its flagrant and intentional refusal to comply with state law.”
The lawsuit also cites the 2018 closure of a Planned Parenthood facility in Columbia, Missouri after “staff admitted to having used moldy abortion equipment on women for months.”
“This is the beginning of the end for Planned Parenthood in the State of Missouri. What they conceal and conspire to do in the dark of night has now been uncovered. I am filing suit to ensure it never happens again,” Attorney General Bailey said Thursday.
“As a father who held my daughter in my arms for the single hour of her life before she died, I know firsthand how important it is to protect life,” Bailey said. “Our children are the future. It is time to eradicate Planned Parenthood once and for all to end this pattern of abhorrent, unethical, and illegal behavior.”
