The Show-Me State is taking the nation’s largest abortion business to court. On Monday, a hearing took place to determine whether a lawsuit filed by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) against Planned Parenthood Great Plains could proceed. Bailey filed suit against Planned Parenthood in February, alleging that the organization was trafficking minors across state lines to obtain abortions without parental consent.
The lawsuit contends, “Planned Parenthood’s most recent troubling activity was captured on video, where Planned Parenthood staff admitted they traffic minors across state lines to perform abortions on them without parental consent. Worse, they admit doing this ‘every day, every day, every day.’”
The allegation stems from a Project Veritas video in which undercover journalists discovered that Planned Parenthood facilities in Missouri arrange to bypass parental notification and transport minors to neighboring Kansas for abortions, since Missouri law includes pro-life protections for the unborn. “We never tell the parents anything,” the facility’s managing director says in the video. According to the video, Planned Parenthood will provide a note to a minor’s school excusing the minor to visit a doctor. “We could give the doctor’s note to where the school, it doesn’t matter if the school agrees or not, we say that she was at the doctor. They have to take it,” a Planned Parenthood employee explained. Planned Parenthood then arranges transport across state borders and back to school, all without parental knowledge.
Furthermore, an adult with no relation to the minor can help arrange an abortion through Planned Parenthood. The undercover journalist in the Project Veritas video posed as the older uncle of a 13-year-old girl and was assured that Planned Parenthood employees “will bypass without the parents.”
“This violates Missouri law, which recognizes that ‘permitting a child to obtain an abortion without the counsel of’ a parent … would violate fundamental parental rights that are ‘deeply rooted in our Nation’s history and tradition,’” Bailey’s lawsuit explains. “Yet that is exactly what video evidence shows Planned Parenthood is doing. Violating the “deeply rooted” right of parents and the laws of Missouri, Planned Parenthood is inducing minors into making life-changing — and life-ending — decisions without parental consent.”
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In Monday’s hearing, Planned Parenthood asked that Bailey’s lawsuit be thrown out, claiming that the content of the Project Veritas video is “hypothetical.” Bailey’s office responded that although there was no 13-year-old girl as claimed in the video, Planned Parenthood employees believed the situation to be factual and responded as though it were. “There was admitted conduct about what they would do in this actual situation,” said Assistant Attorney General Kathryn Monroe (R).
Appearing on Tuesday night’s “Washington Watch,” Bailey explained, “Agents of Planned Parenthood were bragging about committing this conspiracy to conceal criminal offenses, sexual assaults against minors, criminal offenses, like altering writings by taking off letterhead to obtain consent under false pretenses or deny parents the ability to consent to trafficking in minors out of state for abortions.” He continued, “It doesn’t matter that in this instance, the individual was not actually a 13-year-old who was pregnant. What matters is that these individuals admitted to past criminal behavior and evinced a willingness to commit crimes in the future.”
“What’s really frightening here is that … you’ve got a purported 13-year-old who comes in. Thirteen-year-olds can’t consent to sexual contact in the state of Missouri. So this was a sexual assault committed against a minor, a criminal offense, and the clinic was a mandatory reporter. They had a duty under the law to notify law enforcement so they could investigate this crime,” Bailey noted. “And if you look at the reaction of the agents of Planned Parenthood in the video, not only are they willing to conspire to conceal that offense, they don’t fulfill their affirmative obligation to report this offense under the law. They laugh and joke about it and brag about how they do this every day.”
Judge Brouck Jacobs, who presided over Monday’s hearing, said he would take the case under advisement and issue a ruling at a later date. “But we’re confident in this lawsuit moving forward,” Bailey said. He continued, “Planned Parenthood has a documented history of willful violations of the health and safety laws, the parental notification laws, the record retention laws of the state of Missouri.”
The attorney general further noted that his predecessors Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt (both now Republican senators representing Missouri) had exposed numerous instances of Planned Parenthood skirting or violating the law, withholding crucial information from women, and repeatedly jeopardizing women’s health and safety — in addition to ending unborn lives. He concluded, “So anyone who thinks that Planned Parenthood is a legitimate health care organization is deceiving themselves. They’ve demonstrated a commitment to the destruction of human life over the health and safety of women and children.”
“My expectation is the court will allow this lawsuit to go forward and we’ll get into discovery, and we will root out these pernicious efforts by Planned Parenthood to undermine the laws that are designed to protect the health and safety of women and children,” Bailey said, anticipating a decision from Judge Jacobs within a month. “But at the end of the day, this litigation is not going to be over with this decision.”
LifeNews Note: S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
