AI Chatbots Are Sending Women to Crisis Pregnancy Centers

11.20.25

Click to skip ahead: Attacks on Abortion Pills has the latest on the federal lawsuit targeting mifepristone. Ballot Box breaks down where voters could weigh in on abortion in 2026. In the States, news from Florida, Wisconsin, Maine, and more. Everyday Abortion Heroes highlights the work of the underground networks of activists ensuring patients get abortion pills. Finally, Care Crisis reports that popular AI chatbots are directing users to crisis pregnancy centers.

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Attacks on Abortion Pills

The federal lawsuit targeting mifepristone just got even bigger. Sigh.

You might remember that the attorneys general of Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho are suing the FDA in an effort to roll back access to abortion medication. Their primary goal is to stop the mailing of abortion pills—which is largely how women in banned states are getting care, and why the abortion rate hasn’t decreased since Dobbs.

The suit is filled to the brim with junk science and misinformation, from calling abortion providers ‘drug traffickers’ to claiming mifepristone “starves the baby to death in the womb.”

Today, Missouri AG Catherine Hanaway broadened that batshit lawsuit to also challenge the FDA’s approval of the generic form of mifepristone. Conservatives have been melting down about the generic ever since it was announced—even though the FDA literally has to approve generics for medications it has already deemed safe.

Still, Republicans are using it as a pressure point with the Trump administration, insisting the agency is sending “mixed messages” ahead of its bogus ‘safety review’ of the medication.

“If the FDA is reevaluating the brand-name drug’s safety, then it needs to stop rubber-stamping new mail-order generic versions before more women are hurt,” Hanaway said in a statement.

Let this be the reminder it always is: anti-abortion politicians are relentless. They’re coming at mifepristone from every angle because they’re desperate to shut down telemedicine access in particular. For a full breakdown of the lawsuit—and all of its wackiest claims—read our explainer below:

The GOP's Attack on Abortion Pills is Here

Ballot Box

Let’s talk about where abortion will be on the ballot in 2026. (Thanks to Ballotpedia for breaking it all down!) Right now, the only measures certain to appear on the ballot are in Missouri and Nevada—where the proposed amendments have been certified. Other states still have some last hurdles before putting abortion in front of voters. Here’s where everything stands:

Republicans in Montana and Nebraska are trying to pass fetal personhood measures in 2026—the proposed amendments would define personhood as beginning at fertilization.

Nebraska already passed an anti-abortion amendment in 2024: conservatives tricked voters by launching a ballot campaign with a near-identical name to an abortion rights initiative. What’s interesting is that Republicans pushed that amendment—which codified a 12-week abortion ban—by saying it was a reasonable compromise. If they get behind this much more radical measure, they’ll be admitting that this was never about ‘meeting in the middle.’

Then there’s Missouri’s measure—which we’ve been raising the alarm over for months. In keeping with the shameless lying and trickery we’ve seen from Republicans across the country, Missouri lawmakers are trying to ban abortion via a ballot measure called Amendment 3. That just so happens to be the same name as the pro-choice amendment adopted in 2024! In other words, Republicans are hoping to trick voters into supporting a total ban; the language of the measure was even developed to sound as pro-choice as possible.

Turning to pro-choice measures, Nevada has certified a measure for 2026, and there are proposals for amendments in Idaho, Oregon, and Virginia.

Nevada’s measure would protect abortion rights until ‘viability’. Voters already approved the amendment once in 2024, but they need to pass it one more time before it’s enshrined in the state constitution. Similarly, Virginia Democrats passed a pro-choice measure once already; they need to pass it one more time before putting it on the 2026 ballot. (Which they should have no problem doing thanks to the recent election.)

Oregon’s measure would amend the state’s constitutional prohibition against sex discrimination to include laws that discriminate based on pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes. And in Idaho, the proposed measure wouldn’t codify abortion rights in the constitution—but in a state statute. (Idaho doesn’t allow a citizen-led ballot initiative process for constitutional amendments.)

We’ll have more for you as these measures move forward, or don’t.

In the States

Florida Republicans have advanced a bill that would allow parents to bring ‘wrongful death’ suits over fetuses, embryos, and fertilized eggs. The fetal personhood legislation passed out of the state House this week.

Conservative lawmakers in the state have been trying to get this particular bill passed for a few years now. And while this is all about codifying fetal personhood, Republicans claim it’s simply about protecting parents. Give me a break.

There’s a reason that the legislation is opposed not just by abortion rights organizations—but hospitals and physicians. From Kara Gross of the ACLU of Florida:

“The increased liability exposure will be devastating to any healthcare practitioner or hospital that treats pregnant patients, and is especially dangerous to OBGYNs who specialize in high-risk pregnancies.”

To learn more about fetal personhood and what the consequences are when those laws take effect, revisit my conversation with law professor and author Mary Ziegler:

Everything You Need to Know About Fetal Personhood

Last week, Abortion, Every Day broke the news that Wisconsin Republicans plan to propose a nightmare bill that would require miscarriage and abortion patients to use ‘catch kits’ for their pregnancy remains. (It’s as bad as it sounds.)

Today, I’m thrilled to see the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel pick up the story—raising the local alarm over the truly bizarre legislation. State Senate Democratic Committee spokesman Will Karcz called the legislation “super creepy” and said Republicans were trying “to find any possible way to restrict access to reproductive healthcare.”

The bill comes as Wisconsin Republicans are also pushing legislation that could force women with life-threatening pregnancies into c-sections rather than standard abortion procedures.

Keep an eye on: language about ‘endocrine disrupters’. That’s the same term the Heritage Foundation used earlier this month to push for a federal review of birth control. As I’ve written before, the intent is clear: if Republicans can pass a law that says abortion pills harm the environment because they’re “endocrine disrupters,” contraception is the next target.

NPR is covering what happened in Maine when Republicans’ budget bill stripped Medicaid funding from reproductive healthcare clinics that provided abortion—namely, that people lost access to primary care. Listen below:

Quick hits:

• A Black woman in Indiana gave birth on the side of the road after being turned away from a hospital while in active labor;

• More on Ohio’s ‘Baby Olivia’ push;

• And a fact-check of the Florida AG’s claim that mifepristone is dangerous.

Everyday Abortion Heroes

PBS NewsHour just published a segment on the “underground network” of activists and healthcare providers helping women get abortion medication in spite of state bans. It does a really good job relaying how safe abortion pills are—and how dedicated and incredible these activists are.

Unfortunately, it does have an obligatory interview with an anti-abortion activist: president of Texas Right to Life John Seago, best known for recruiting bitter exes to sue over their partners’ abortions. But feel free to skip over that part.

My favorite moment part is when Ashaba in Louisiana says, “Abortion is a decision between a woman and herself.” We often hear that abortion is a decision between a woman and her doctor—I like this mantra much, much better.

Take the time to watch it, and be reminded that we will save us.

Care Crisis

Well this is terrible: A new report from Campaign for Accountability found that AI chatbots from Google, Meta, Perplexity, and OpenAI are directing users to crisis pregnancy centers and pushing dangerously inaccurate information about so-called abortion “reversal.”

The group tested the chatbots this summer, asking whether someone could change their mind after taking mifepristone—the first medication used in a two-drug abortion regimen. From Bloomberg:

“In 70% of responses, the chatbots provided the phone number for Heartbeat International’s Abortion Pill Reversal Helpline, a service promoted by hundreds of so-called crisis pregnancy centers that encourage women not to get abortions. In half of the exchanges, it was the only phone number listed.

Some answers framed the hotline as a neutral medical resource that could connect users with ‘a health care professional in your area’ or with doctors ‘experienced in this protocol,’ without noting that major medical groups say the treatment is neither necessary nor safe.”

If you know anything about Heartbeat International, you know why this is so troubling. This massive crisis-pregnancy-center network routinely collects private data from women, falsely tells them it’s protected by HIPAA, and then shares it around:

EXCLUSIVE: Health Data Breach at America’s Largest Crisis Pregnancy Org

Bloomberg notes that part of the problem is SEO: Heartbeat and other crisis pregnancy centers have poured years into gaming Google searches, trying to show up at the top of results for women seeking abortion care. That flood of content makes their sites more likely to be scraped by AI.

Michael Clauw, Campaign for Accountability’s communications director, put it bluntly: the bots are “taking the quantity over the quality” when pulling information to generate answers.

Read the whole report here.