In the Documents: Missouri AG Bailey’s Contacts with Anti-Abortion Rights Groups

Months after Missouri voters approved Amendment 3 overturning the state’s abortion ban and enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution, conservative state officials are still seeking to undermine the will of voters by introducing new restrictions that contravene the ballot initiative.

Earlier this month, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey ordered the state’s largest reproductive health care providers to stop offering medication abortions — procedures that those providers are not yet offering thanks to delays in approvals from the health department. It’s the latest example of efforts to undercut recently passed citizen referenda, and an indication of the lengths Bailey will go to in attempting to reject voters’ support for abortion rights, including exploiting misinformation about safe methods of pregnancy termination, as also revealed in records obtained by American Oversight.

Medical or medication abortion, sometimes called “chemical abortion” by anti-abortion rights activists, is a safe, effective, FDA-approved method of inducing abortion using medications like mifepristone and misoprostol. In 2023, medication abortion accounted for more than 60 percent of all abortions in the U.S.

The records obtained by American Oversight shed light on Bailey’s interactions with far-right anti-abortion rights groups like Missouri Right to Life, Project Veritas, and the Heritage Foundation. One document, a March 2023 memo prepared by Students for Life, outlined ways Bailey could strategically target medication abortion in Missouri by citing consumer protection laws.

The memo, titled “Consumer Protection Concerns with Chemical Abortion,” misrepresents medication abortion as unsafe and outlines legal strategies to investigate, challenge, and prohibit its use, citing state laws meant to safeguard consumers from deceptive business practices. The records suggest that Bailey met with Students for Life to discuss the memo in March 2023.

This month, Bailey sent the state’s two Planned Parenthood affiliates cease and desist orders demanding they stop performing medication abortions, even though the clinics have not been offering them. Missouri law requires medication abortion providers to first receive approval from the state Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) for a “complication” plan that details how clinic staff would respond to an emergency. Both of the Planned Parenthood affiliates said they previously submitted their plans to the state but have not yet received acknowledgment or approval from DHSS.

Bailey’s letters falsely claimed the clinics were performing medication abortions without having approved complication plans. In a warning letter Bailey sent to Planned Parenthood of the Great Rivers on March 5, he claimed authority to stop actions that violate the state’s consumer protection laws, aligning with a strategy laid out in the Students for Life memo. Bailey sent an identical warning letter to the other Planned Parenthood affiliate in Missouri, Planned Parenthood of the Great Plains, on March 12, the same day he sent both cease and desist orders.

Immediately after voters approved Amendment 3 in November, Bailey issued an official opinion arguing that many of the state’s abortion restrictions — including its trigger law, which prohibited most cases of abortion and went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — could remain in place. Bailey is also one of three state attorneys general who filed a lawsuit last year asking the Food and Drug Administration to reinstate restrictions on mifepristone.

As in other states, the effort to sabotage Missouri’s ballot initiative began before voters went to the voting booth. In the lead-up to the 2024 election, several Republican officials and anti-abortion rights groups fought to keep Amendment 3 off of Missouri’s ballot. More than a year before the election, a judge ordered then-Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft to change the ballot summary language his office drafted that would have asked, in part, if Missourians wanted to “allow for dangerous, unregulated, and unrestricted abortions, from conception to live birth.” Ashcroft certified the ballot measure in August, then decertified it in September, the same month another judge ordered him to remove language about Amendment 3 on his office’s website that she said was unfair and inaccurate.

American Oversight has long been investigating efforts to restrict abortion rights. Read more here about our investigation into efforts by public officials and conservative interest groups to undermine democracy by sabotaging abortion access ballot measures.