Abortion pill business returns to Missouri due to pro-abortion amendment

Planned Parenthood began dispensing abortion pills in Missouri last month after a judge struck down several pro-life laws, citing the state’s radical 2024 abortion amendment.

JEFFERSON CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Remote distribution of abortion pills is officially returning to Missouri for the first time since 2018, thanks to Jackson County Circuit Judge Jerri Zhang’s June ruling invalidating several pro-life laws, including an in-person dispensing requirement. In November 2024, Missouri residents approved a state constitutional amendment establishing a purported “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” that applies to “all matters relating to (so-called) reproductive health care, including but not limited to prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, (so-called) abortion care, miscarriage care, and respectful birthing conditions.” It prohibits the legislature from banning abortion until “fetal viability” and after “viability” if an abortionist claims that killing a woman’s unborn child is “needed to protect the life or physical or mental health of the pregnant person.”

The amendment effectively invalidated the state’s near-total abortion ban, which only allowed abortion when allegedly necessary to avoid the mother’s death or “substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.” Last month, Zhang ruled that the amendment also nullifies mandatory abortion waiting periods, admitting privilege requirements for abortion facilities, informed consent standards, and a requirement that abortion pills can only be dispensed in-person. As a result, Live Action reports, the abortion industry has reactivated its pill business in the state, which had been dormant for eight years.

“We’ve had procedural abortion restored for over a year now after the 2024 ‘right to reproductive freedom’ went into effect,” said Planned Parenthood Great Plains CEO Emily Wales. “We recently rolled out medication (i.e. chemical) abortion at our Gladstone location, which is the first time in decades that a facility that hadn’t previously had abortion can help with these services.” “Medication abortions are much more prevalent than surgical abortions,” said pro-life activist Sam Lee.

“We anticipate there’s a lot more abortions being performed in Missouri than there were before.” Missouri pro-lifers hope to change things this fall, when another amendment will appear on the ballot. If approved, it would ban abortion except for rape and incest in the first trimester or for “medical emergencies” throughout pregnancy, along with banning taxpayer funding for abortion or youth gender “transitions.”

Republican state Sen. Mike Moon is also proposing a different amendment that would establish personhood at conception and clarify there is no “constitutional right” to abortion. That proposal does not directly ban abortion but could be interpreted as requiring a stronger prohibition than the other amendment. Thirteen states ban most abortions starting at conception; another five ban it at around six weeks, with additional states imposing a range of later restrictions.

Mail-order pills have become the abortion lobby’s most potent tool for circumventing these laws and preserving abortion without Roe v. Wade. The latest data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute reported 1,125,930 clinical abortions in 2025, a slight increase from 2024, which Guttmacher attributed in large part to abortion pills. Planned Parenthood’s 2024–2025 annual report says that it alone committed 434,450 abortions, a record number for the organization and eight percent more than the previous year.

The abortion lobby’s zeal to make abortion pills as easy as possible to distribute and obtain disregards a wealth of evidence indicating they are far from harmless to women even when taken with medical supervision. Pro-lifers point to an April 2025 analysis by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) which concluded that almost 11 percent of women suffer sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other major conditions after taking mifepristone, according to insurance data, plus similar findings by the Restoration of America Foundation, as part of a “growing body of evidence indicating that the health risks associated with mifepristone abortions are severe, widespread, and significantly underreported.”

Pro-lifers are currently waiting for a Trump administration review of abortion pill data that finally commenced last month, with a timetable ensuring that the findings will not be released before the midterm congressional elections.