Anti-abortion conservatives have long sought to force Planned Parenthood’s clinics to close their doors and to make it harder, if not impossible, to get abortion pills as part of a two-pronged approach to limit access to abortion.

First, undermine Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers by questioning their credibility and block their funding. Second, try to ban mifepristone – a drug used in more than half of all abortions – in part by saying it’s unsafe.

As law professors who teach courses about health, poverty and reproductive rights law, we’re closely watching what’s happening with both strategies. We are particularly interested in how they will affect women’s health care, now that each state can write its own abortion laws.

Opponents of abortion rights are attacking Planned Parenthood because its clinics perform hundreds of thousands of abortions, in addition to more than 9 million other procedures, every year.

For example, it screens patients for cancer, provides contraceptive care, tests people for sexually transmitted infections, conducts pregnancy tests and offers prenatal services. Abortions account for only 4% of all of Planned Parenthood’s services.

Conservative-led states are taking aim at the nonprofit with both litigation and legislation.

For example, the attorneys general of Missouri and Florida allege in 2025 lawsuits that Planned Parenthood’s website “lies” about the safety of mifepristone.

Planned Parenthood is not the only nonprofit that is accused of deceiving the public that way. In December 2025, the South Dakota attorney general sued Mayday Health, a reproductive health education nonprofit, alleging that its advertising in South Dakota violated a state law that bans “deceptive practices.”

In late January, after Mayday countersued in a federal court in New York, that court temporarily blocked South Dakota’s actions.

Other states are taking similar steps. Kentucky, which, like South Dakota,........

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