Is ChatGPT Anti-Abortion?

12.17.25

Click to skip ahead: Attacks on Abortion Pills looks at conservatives’ junk science study, in their own words. In the Courts, a new filing from Louisiana attacks telehealth. In the States, news from Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Ohio, and more. And in AI & Abortion, repro rights advocates raise the alarm over ChatGPT.

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Attacks on Abortion Pills

Well, well, well: the anti-abortion activist ‘researchers’ behind the junk science mifepristone ‘study’ have published an op-ed in The Federalist—and are giving the whole game away in the process.

Quick refresher: Earlier this year, the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC)—an anti-abortion group posing as a legitimate think tank—released a so-called study claiming mifepristone causes “serious or life-threatening adverse events” in more than 10% of patients. The authors, Jamie Bryan Hall and EPPC president Ryan T. Anderson, were both long-time employees of the Heritage Foundation—the group behind Project 2025.

Anderson is also the author of an extremist anti-abortion book, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing, where he complains that women get to “consent” to parenthood and accuses “pro-abortion feminists” of wanting the “freedom to walk away from unwanted pregnancy—by killing the child.” What’s more, after releasing the report, the EPPC coordinated with the nation’s largest anti-abortion groups in a pressure campaign against the FDA and HHS.

In other words: these supposedly objective ‘researchers’ are leading the activist effort to ban mifepristone.

Despite the glaring conflicts of interest—and the inarguable fact that the study is trash—the EPPC’s report has already been used to advance anti-abortion legislation, fuel lawsuits attacking mifepristone, and serve as the excuse for the Trump administration’s sham “safety review” of the drug.

What’s especially frustrating is that a lot of this could have been prevented. When the EPPC dropped the report, Abortion, Every Day practically begged journalists to pick up the story: to investigate the obvious bias, the bad science, and the potential collusion with the Trump administration. Had that happened—if there was serious critical coverage of this ‘study’—Republicans might have been too embarrassed to attach their names to it.

But with a few notable exceptions, that didn’t happen. Instead, the EPPC’s report (when it was covered at all) was given standard ‘both sides’ treatment—allowing conservatives to frame their absurdity as credible. That kind of coverage has consequences.

In fact, Anderson and Hall brag in today’s op-ed that Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler “carefully examined” their study and “ultimately did not assign us any of his famous ‘Pinocchios.’” (Yes, the same Kessler who wrote a whole column questioning the story of a 10-year-old rape victim.)

Anderson and Hall also claim that Americans support restrictions on telehealth abortion pills (they don’t), and recycle the tired lie that abortion isn’t really ever a woman’s choice, but coercion (also false).

Our favorite part, though, is where they’re clearly responding to AED’s takedown of their data—specifically, their sleight of hand around emergency room “visits” after mifepristone. (There’s a big difference between “visiting” the ER and being treated at the ER!)

But the biggest takeaway is this: if you’re publishing op-eds in The Federalist while running an activist campaign to ban mifepristone, you don’t get to pretend you’re an unbiased researcher.

In the Courts

Speaking of attacks on abortion pills built on the EPPC’s junk science, there’s an update in Louisiana’s suit against the FDA. In a new filing today, Attorney General Liz Murrill asks a federal judge to block the FDA rule that allows mifepristone to be prescribed via telehealth.

Please remember: this isn’t just about Louisiana.

If the court sides with Murrill, patients in every state—including pro-choice states—would be forced to pick up abortion medication in person. As Julia Kaye of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project puts it, “Forcing patients to travel hundreds of miles to a health center just to be handed a pill obviously has no safety benefit, which is why every leading medical group opposes this change.”

And Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, says, “anti-abortion politicians continue to attack access to mifepristone because they want to ban all abortion, everywhere.”

That’s exactly it: conservatives are desperate to end telehealth abortion pills, because they know it’s allowed women to sidestep state bans—and because it’s the primary reason the abortion rate hasn’t fallen.

We’ll have more for you on the filing tomorrow. In the meantime, remember that there are abortion rights advocates in every single state ready to help you get the care you need—no matter what.

In the States

Tennessee Republicans are poised to target a new law enacted just this year that codifies the right to birth control and IVF. The Fertility Treatment and Contraceptive Protection Act—passed to counter confusion created by the state’s sweeping abortion ban—made Tennessee the only Southern state to explicitly protect access to contraception and IVF.

Fellow Substacker Rachel Wells at TN Repro News actually called this months ago—reporting that on the morning after the law was signed, legislators met with Tennessee anti-abortion groups and strategized over how to repeal the legislation. (As we’ve reported again and again, anti-abortion groups oppose IVF and birth control.)

And when the state General Assembly discussed the bill this year, one Tennessee lawmaker claimed it “creates a statutory right to create and destroy human embryos without qualification, limitation or restriction,” and that it “does not treat a human embryo as a person.”

All of which is to say, advocates expected this. Here’s what Kelli Nowers, executive director of Awake Tennessee, told WLPN:

“We are preparing for significant backlash next session, which starts in about a month. They made it clear that they see this law as something that needs to be reversed and/or weakened.”

We’ll be keeping an eye on this one.

Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists are organizing against a slate of bills in Pennsylvania that would bolster abortion access, including:

• HB 1957, which would codify abortion rights in the state constitution up until fetal ‘viability’;

• HB 670, which would create a state-level version of the FACE Act, prohibiting anti-abortion activists from obstructing access to reproductive healthcare clinics;

• HB 2005, which would end the state’s 24-hour waiting period;

• And a series of bills to bolster the state’s shield law, protecting providers who provide care to out-of-state patients.

Anti-abortion organizations are doing their normal bullshitting, and mischaracterizing the bills. For example, they claim HB 1957 would allow for abortion throughout pregnancy—if only! Like most pro-choice amendments, this one allows for restrictions after ‘viability’ (which isn’t a real medical standard).

Here’s the thing: multiple conservative groups are riling up their followers for a serious show of force—so if you’re a Pennsylvania resident, it’s a good time to contact your state rep!

Geographer and journalist Sarah Melotte has a vital piece at The Daily Yonder, reminding us that nearly half (46%) of rural Americans live in states with either ‘most restrictive’ or ‘very restrictive’ abortion legislation. That’s 21.3 million people.

Melotte, who analyzed data from the Guttmacher Institute, also found that over a third of Americans living in metropolitan areas live under highly restrictive abortion laws—that’s about 100 million Americans.

Consequently, there’s significant overlap between those living under abortion bans and those living in regions where access to health care is severely strained and maternal mortality is on the rise.

What’s especially important is that Melotte challenges the idea that rural Americans wanted this, pointing to a disparity in rural voters who voted for Trump and those who support abortion restrictions. As we know, abortion bans are broadly unpopular: 81% of voters reject government intervention in pregnancy. Even the deepest red states don’t want bans:

The Most Unpopular Laws in America

In Minneapolis, Minnesota, disturbing video footage shows an ICE agent handcuffing and forcing a pregnant woman on the ground, crushing her beneath his weight, refusing to let her up, and then dragging her toward a vehicle while community members protest.

Eventually, the ICE agents reportedly pepper sprayed and tased the crowd.

The Minneapolis Police Department has tried to distance itself from the ICE agents’ barbaric behavior, telling local news they determined there was “no violence occurring” against the federal agents:

“We have been training our officers for the last five years very, very intensely on de-escalation, but unfortunately that is…often not what we are seeing from other agencies in the city.”

ICE claims the raid involving the horrific assault against a pregnant woman was a ‘success’: They successfully rounded up a young Ecuadorian couple by shattering the windows of their car, and have since sent the pregnant woman to a detainment center in Illinois. It remains unclear where her husband was sent.

Earlier this year, HuffPost reported extensively on the inhumane treatment of pregnant and postpartum women detained by ICE—including denial of privacy, showers, and sanitary products. This is the ‘pro-life’ Trump administration’s agenda: family separation and state violence against pregnant women.

Finally, remember how we said conservatives’ junk science ‘study’ is being used to restrict abortion pills? Look no further than Ohio, where Republicans are pushing legislation that would ban telehealth for medication with “severe adverse effects” in more than 5% of patients. This bill was crafted specifically with mifepristone—and the EPPC’s research—in mind.

Don’t forget: Ohio voters codified abortion rights in the state constitution in 2023! So the bill is in direct opposition to what Ohioans want and voted for.

If you’d like to learn more about the bill, Cincinnati Edition dug into the legislation earlier today:

Quick hits:

• The Kansas City Star has more on Missouri U.S. Senator Josh Hawley’s new anti-abortion group;

• The Copper Courier has a short video about the Arizona doctors challenging the state’s abortion restrictions now that voters have passed a pro-choice amendment;

• And in a very odd story, one of the members of Alaska’s all-male medical board—which has been pushing to restrict abortion—has died in a house fire after being arrested for owning images of child sexual abuse.

AI & Abortion

A few weeks ago, AED flagged a report from the Campaign for Accountability that showed AI chatbots were sending women to anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. That would be bad enough on its own—but that’s just one of the issues with AI and abortion. Advocates are now raising alarms about everything from chatbots getting rapidly changing abortion laws wrong to how AI decides which sources are “credible.”

That’s why we highly recommend you read this deep dive over at Mashable. A few key takeaways:

More and more people are using chatbots as their search engine—which means AI is already shaping how (and whether) people access abortion care. I Need An A, for example, says providers they work with have seen a 30% drop in Google search traffic, alongside a rise in AI-driven traffic.

One reason chatbots keep recommending crisis pregnancy centers? Anti-abortion groups have spent years gaming Google, flooding the internet with content that now makes them more likely to be scraped by AI. That’s why telehealth providers are thinking carefully about search engine optimization. Mashable notes that they’re working to saturate the internet with reliable and accurate information, and keywords that drive users to sites that can actually help.

Others are doubling down offline:

“Amelia Bonow, executive director of Shout Your Abortion, told Mashable that she’s seen a shift back to the movement’s roots. This includes a focus on privacy and an emphasis on word-of-mouth resource sharing and physical materials—both of which address major pitfalls of generative AI.”

This is something we’ve been thinking about here at AED, too: how to strengthen our IRL work and build community offline to prepare for increased abortion speech censorship.

There’s still a lot to unpack—but we need to start now. As Rebecca Nall, executive director of I Need An A, put it, “We have this finite moment in time to influence [AI companies] in a way that we missed out doing with Google 30 years ago…We have maybe six months to try to make that happen before it’s too big and too hairy.”

“If you cannot use your journalism to take risks and be creative in the face of injustice, then you are normalizing the conditions of fascism.”

- Andrea Faye Hart, “Journalism can learn from the Southern reproductive justice movement”