A Missouri lawmaker is calling for charges to be brought against Planned Parenthood in response to an investigative video that purportedly details an operation to facilitate abortions for underage girls that involves crossing state lines.
Project Veritas published a video in December that showed a Missouri Planned Parenthood staffer admitting the organization helps young girls travel to Kansas so they can obtain illegal abortions. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, a Missouri state senator, said the video was grounds for legal prosecution.
“My understanding, having read [the] relevant statute, is that this is illegal activity,” Coleman said in a video on the Project Veritas website. “And it is my hope the prosecutor in the area will bring charges based on the evidence or at least will form a grand jury.”
Missouri bans abortion except in cases of medical emergency. Abortion is legal in Kansas up to 22 weeks of gestation.
The Missouri Planned Parenthood staffer, whose full name was not revealed, says in the undercover video that the organization transports underage girls to Kanas for abortions “every day.” The staffer said the girls can request that their parents not be notified about the abortion. She insisted that there are “people who will pay for the whole thing.”
“Missouri lawmakers, and really pro-life activists, had long suspected that girls were being really trafficked out of state by the clinics in Missouri into states that do still allow abortion,” Coleman said in the Project Veritas video.
Individuals working undercover for Project Veritas discussed obtaining an abortion for a 13-year-old girl, which the Planned Parenthood staffer said was doable across state lines.
“She’s an adult in our clinics,” the staffer responded when concerns were raised about the girl’s age.
A similar dynamic has been playing out in Texas following the enactment of its abortion ban. A New Mexico group purportedly helps up to 10 women per week travel from Texas to get an abortion across state lines, The Dallas Morning News reported.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden extended a State of the Union invitation to a Texas woman who had to travel out of state to obtain an abortion after she lost a lawsuit against Texas seeking an exemption to its abortion ban on the grounds the pregnancy put her life at risk.
