Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., is asking the Trump administration’s legal enforcement arm to formally investigate abortion drug dealer marketplace Plan C for flouting the law by advertising shipment of mifepristone to states where it is banned.
Hawley previously introduced legislation to ban the popular and dangerous abortion drug and give survivors a legal remedy against foreign abortion pill makers. Successfully curbing the illicit shipping of those pills into states where they are banned requires more, including intervention from the Department of Justice in the form of a criminal investigation, he wrote in a criminal referral on Monday.
“At the center of the effort is an entity called Plan C, a left-wing dark-money operation that styles itself a ‘public health information campaign’ but functions, in practice, as the referral and logistics hub for shipping abortion drugs into states whose laws prohibit it,” Hawley wrote in his letter to Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche.
More than a dozen states ban mifepristone for chemical abortions. Yet websites like Plan C enable anyone with Internet access, even people in pro-life states, to order abortion pills to their door in less than a minute.
“I could’ve purchased the drugs online through international or stateside abortion facilities or online vendors. Don’t want to go through a medical provider? No problem, according to Plan C. Skip the medical consultation and ID requirements and get pills from ‘community members.’ Are you a minor? Despite the ‘legal risks,’ they still provide drugs for children without parental consent,” Federalist contributor Jordan Butler previously documented.
The prevalence of mail-order mifepristone has paved the way for abuse and injury to plague women who wanted to keep their babies. A majority of abortions, 70 percent, are already believed to be unwanted, coerced, or inconsistent with the mother’s values and desires. One recent study suggests that women who initiate chemical abortions with mifepristone don’t feel fully informed about the physical, mental, and emotional effects linked to chemical abortion.
The Biden administration’s rollback of mifepristone prescribing guardrails have yielded even more horror stories from women across the nation. That includes Rosalie Markezich, one of the plaintiffs in a landmark abortion pill case out of Louisiana. Such women are susceptible to injuries and even death linked to mifepristone, especially when taking it unknowingly or under duress.
This backdoor, DIY abortion practice predicates itself on violating, in Hawley’s words, “both state and federal law.” And, as Hawley further noted, “Plan C does not operate alone.”
“Danco Laboratories, a large and wildly profitable manufacturer of mifepristone, lists Plan C among the patient resources on its own website, steering prospective customers to an organization that instructs Americans on how to break the law,” Hawley warned. “On information and belief, GenBioPro, the generic manufacturer, maintains a similar referral relationship with Plan C.”
The DOJ, according to Hawley, is “well positioned to determine the full extent of these relationships, including any financial ties” and must do so with “the closest scrutiny.”
Shortly after publicizing the letter, Hawley publicly celebrated a “great meeting” between him and Blanche “on the criminal activities of the Soros-funded dark money groups and abortion pharma companies illegally pumping abortion drugs into Missouri and other states.”
“Look forward to DOJ’s work,” Hawley wrote.
During his confirmation hearing last week, Blanche reaffirmed that the Trump administration believes Biden’s radically relaxed rules for obtaining abortion pills “were wrong.”
The acting attorney general stopped short of sharing the DOJ’s “litigation strategy” in the ongoing landmark Louisiana v. FDA case. He did, however, pledge the DOJ and the Trump administration as a whole to “protect the life of the unborn and work with states and obviously [Hawley] to make sure that we do that in the best way.”
Some pro-life states such as Texas have taken aim at Plan C, among other abortion pill black market participants. In August 2025, Lone Star State Attorney General Ken Paxton sent cease and desist letters to Plan C, Her Safe Harbor, and Aid Access affiliate Remy Coeytaux for “promoting, selling, or facilitating the shipment” of the drug regimen responsible for most of the nation’s abortions.
