Florida sues Planned Parenthood for lying to women about abortion pill’s safety 

The state of Florida is suing Planned Parenthood over “manifestly false” claims regarding the safety of chemical abortions, which hospitalize thousands of women annually, the state’s attorney general announced Thursday.

“Today our office is filing a lawsuit against Planned Parenthood after they falsely marketed to women that their chemical abortion pills are safer than the medication you get on the shelf at your local drug store,” AG James Uthmeier said in a video post on X.

Uthmeier said 1 in 25 women who take mifepristone – the first pill of two taken for a chemical abortion – are hospitalized, and 36 women have died since the pill’s approval in 2000. Yet, Planned Parenthood promotes chemical abortion as “safer than Tylenol,” as seen on its website.

“This is wrong and we are going to hold them accountable,” Uthmeier said. “They want you to believe that these chemical abortion pills that kill unborn babies are safer than the medication you’d take for an average headache. At the end of the day, we stand by our women.”

The lawsuit cites multiple studies to demonstrate the dangers mifepristone poses to women. One study, from The Ethics and Public Policy Center, found nearly 11% of women suffer a serious adverse event within 45 days of taking mifepristone, according to filed insurance claims.

The suit cites another study from 2009 that reported 20% of women experience serious adverse events, including 15% who suffer hemorrhaging and 2% who endure infection.

“In fact, abortion drugs are not safer than Tylenol,” the lawsuit argues. “These claims have no basis in reality and have been repeatedly debunked.”

The lawsuit argues Planned Parenthood lies to women about chemical abortion’s safety to gain a marginable profit.

“Planned Parenthood and its Florida operations mislead women about the critical and undeniable risks of a chemical abortion by deceptively claiming these powerful drugs are less risky than everyday pain medication,” the lawsuit says. “This is no accident. Planned Parenthood profits from this deception.”

Planned Parenthood – even as a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization – accumulates more than $2 billion in revenue and has $3.1 billion in assets, according to the company’s annual report, the lawsuit states.

Indeed, Florida’s lawsuit is littered with the words “profit” and “profitable.”

Nine Planned Parenthood executives earned $500,000 or more in fiscal year 2022-23, according to the suit. An average salary for an “affiliate executive” is $352,661 – “the 98th percentile of U.S. wage earners.”

The “highest paid executive” made more than $875,000, and Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson raked in $904,014 in 2024, “a 74% increase from 2015,” the lawsuit reports.

Two-thirds of all U.S. abortions are chemical, according to Planned Parenthood. This shift from surgical abortions to chemical abortions is an intentional profit-increase strategy, the suit argues.

“As compared to chemical abortion, surgical abortion poses significant costs for abortion clinics in the form of staff, surgical equipment and instruments, and laboratory and imaging tests,” the lawsuit argues.

Interestingly, Planned Parenthood charges $580 for chemical abortion pills, even though a single dose costs the company less than $100, the suit explains.

“It is vile that Planned Parenthood cares more about lining their pockets than providing women with factual information about the health risks of chemical abortion drugs,” Uthmeier said in a statement to The Miami Herald.

While chemical abortion has become Planned Parenthood’s “cash cow,” these pills are four times more dangerous to women than surgical abortions, the suit argues.

“While elective surgical abortion and elective chemical abortion are both unethical practices that violate the Hippocratic Oath and deny the inalienable rights of all human beings, the former is much less dangerous for the mother.”

In addition to these increased dangers, the Biden administration removed the requirement for in-person doctor consultation prior to receiving mifepristone, the suit explains. Under the guise of COVID policy regulation, anyone can now have mifepristone shipped directly to their door without a doctor’s prognosis of the pregnancy.

The lack of an in-person exam multiplies the dangers to women, the suit says. In 2022, a Planned Parenthood abortionist sent a young woman abortion pills after determining her to be six weeks pregnant via tele-health. After taking the pills, the woman gave birth to a “‘lifeless, fully-formed baby,’” later determined to be between 30 and 36 weeks old, the lawsuit notes.  

The suit says Planned Parenthood’s false advertising to women violates the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act and qualifies as “racketeering activity under the Florida Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act.”

For Planned Parenthood’s continual deception, Florida is asking the court to impose the “statutory penalty of $10,000” for every chemical abortion since the organization publicly advertised mifepristone as “safe as Tylenol” – around June 2023.

The state estimates that amounts to $350 million for the 35,000 abortions in the past two years.

Planned Parenthood full-throatedly defends its advertisements.

“The Florida AG is simply wrong,” Planned Parenthood of Florida posted on X in September. “Mifepristone is the most common form of medication abortion, which accounted for two-thirds of abortions in the U.S. in 2023, and was approved by the FDA over two decades ago.”

Alexandra Mandado, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Florida, called the state’s lawsuit a “politically motivated attack,” according to CBS News.

“This lawsuit is just another attack on safe and legal abortion in Florida and a further attempt to erode access to all abortion care by targeting medication abortion now that we have a near-total abortion ban in the state. Lawsuits like this are part of an effort to sow confusion and attack Planned Parenthood for the care we provide,” Mandado said.

Florida’s lawsuit comes after numerous promises from Health and Human Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the Food and Drug Administration to review the safety of mifepristone. No such reviews have yet been announced as being completed.