EXCLUSIVE — Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey defended his legal crusade against Planned Parenthood in his state, telling the Washington Examiner that “the destruction of human life is not healthcare.”
“The Left worships at the altar of Planned Parenthood as if they were a golden calf,” Bailey said in an exclusive interview. “This is a lawless cult of death with a documented pattern of willful refusal to comply with state statutes.”
Bailey, a Republican, filed a lawsuit in February against Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which has 13 locations across four states, accusing the abortion provider of trafficking minors across state lines to obtain abortions without parental knowledge or consent.
The lawsuit is based in large part on a Project Veritas video, which surreptitiously recorded Planned Parenthood Great Plains staff members explaining how they help children get out-of-state abortions by forging doctors’ notes, pulling students out of school, and driving them to Kansas.
On the video, a staff member explained to an undercover reporter that Planned Parenthood Great Plains staff help underage girls obtain out-of-state abortions “every day, every day, every day.” Missouri law prohibits abortion in nearly every scenario except when a pregnancy threatens the life of the mother.
Bailey’s case, which he touts as the “beginning of the end” of Planned Parenthood in the state, also laid out a yearslong timeline of alleged misconduct by the abortion network, including claims that it utilized unsanitary equipment and failed to report complications from abortion procedures.
“This is a press release dressed up as legal action from an unelected attorney general,” Emily Wales, CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, told the Missouri Independent upon the initial filing of the lawsuit. “It is based on ‘evidence’ from fraudulent, extreme anti-abortion actors, who claim to be ‘journalists.’”
Bailey was appointed to the position of attorney general in November 2022, taking office in January 2023. Before that, he served as Gov. Mike Parson’s (R-MO) general counsel.
Planned Parenthood Great Plains did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
Bailey called the right-wing Project Veritas team “true investigative journalists” who are able to uncover “these sorts of legal violations.”
The lawsuit has drawn the ire of left-wing commentators, such as from Aaron Rupar’s Public Notice Substack and from an op-ed in the Missouri Independent by lawyer Bridget Dunlap, who have attacked the lawsuit by criticizing its reliance upon the Project Veritas video.
Dunlap argued Bailey’s lawsuit is an “endorsement of anti-abortion violence,” saying that criticizing Planned Parenthood this way can lead to abortion clinic shootings, such as the 2015 Richard Dear shooting at a Colorado affiliate.
“What [Bailey] can do is vilify abortion providers and amplify and legitimize the call to ‘Be Brave. Do Something,’” Dunlap wrote.
“That is absolute garbage,” Bailey told the Washington Examiner in an interview, responding to the accusations of encouraging violence.
“No other organization in the state of Missouri would be allowed to brazenly flout our laws without repercussions and receive this kind of favored treatment from the media,” he added. “Shame on them.”
Missouri has some of the strongest abortion restrictions in the country. One law, which Bailey says Planned Parenthood Great Plains violated, is a prohibition on “causing, aiding, or assisting a minor to obtain an abortion.”
While Bailey confirmed to the Washington Examiner that giving information about obtaining an abortion in Kansas is not illegal, he said trafficking to obtain an abortion violates that law.
“The nucleus of fact began and occurred within the state of Missouri, but I would also point out at the end of the day, this is a common tactic of the progressive Left,” he said. “They want to show you trees in isolation and then convince you there’s no forest.”
Bailey pointed to what he said were multiple potential violations of law that arose from the Project Veritas video, including assisting minors to obtain out-of-state abortions and “committing acts of subterfuge, to include potential acts of forgery, to avoid having to obtain the consent of the parents, and to conceal the transportation of the minor across the line for an abortion from schools and judges.”
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Planned Parenthood is also required by law to report criminal sexual offenses to law enforcement, and the undercover video centers on whether a 13-year-old can obtain an abortion.
“Rather than offering to or informing the minor that they were going to have to report a criminal act to law enforcement, the clinic brags about assisting minors in concealing these sorts of sexual offenses,” Bailey said.
