How RICO Could Be Weaponized Against Abortion Providers and Funds

Anti-mafia laws, long used to dismantle criminal empires, may become the next tool to restrict abortion.

A January report from Americans United for Life (AUL), a leading anti-abortion group, called on prosecutors to use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) against abortion clinics and funds.

The group argues that mailing abortion pills violates the Comstock Act, a 19th-century law that bans sending certain materials through the mail. Section 1461 of the law deems “obscene” or “crime-inciting” materials to be “nonmailable.”

Some states that ban abortion, including Texas, also make it illegal to “aid or abet” an abortion. That could mean helping someone obtain, travel to, or pay for care. Prosecutors could, theoretically, argue that doing these things repeatedly—even across state lines—adds up to a “pattern” of illegal activity.

That’s where RICO, a law usually used to go after organized crime, could come into the picture.

AUL’s legal strategy essentially links the Comstock Act to RICO: Comstock could provide a basis for banning abortion pills by mail, while RICO could be used to pursue wider charges against anyone accused of running what prosecutors consider a repeated, coordinated, and illegal operation to provide patients with abortion pills.

This combined approach could sweep up everyone involved in medication abortion care, including the doctors who prescribe the pills, the patients who take them, and the abortion funds that help people pay for the treatment, lawyers said in interviews with Rewire News Group. Even major pharmacy chains, like CVS and Walgreens, that dispense abortion pills could be found in breach of Comstock, then slapped with a RICO charge.

‘Just bleed them dry’

Experts warn that using RICO laws against abortion funds has yet to be tested in court, and any attempt would likely face significant legal challenges. But RICO has already been used to threaten abortion access on a small scale.

In 2023, the small New Mexico city of Eunice sued New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Attorney General Raúl Torrez over a state law prohibiting municipalities from interfering in their residents’ right to reproductive care. Eunice’s suit argued its rule limiting abortion clinics’ activity was valid, because it would force clinics to comply with the federal Comstock Act, which the city claimed overrode state law.

The suit also cited RICO as another tool to target providers. Eunice argued that repeated actions to assist abortions—such as financing, transporting, or providing medication—could be treated as a “pattern of illegal activity” under the law.

New Mexico’s Supreme Court unanimously invalidated city-level anti-abortion ordinances in January 2025. But if another court, down the line, accepts an argument like Eunice’s, it might allow prosecutors to bring RICO charges against abortion providers.

After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, many states quickly imposed strict or total abortion bans. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall went a step further, warning that anyone who helped residents seek abortion care out of state could face felony charges. In 2022, Marshall said volunteers assisting with abortion travel could be prosecuted under Alabama’s accessory and conspiracy laws.

“There’s no doubt this is a criminal law and general principles would apply,” Marshall said during a radio interview. “If someone was promoting themselves out as a funder of abortions out of state, that is potentially criminally actionable for us. If there are groups promoting this as part of their services, we will be taking a look at that.”

Though Alabama cannot currently criminalize lawful activity in other states, Marshall’s threat forced the Yellowhammer Fund—an abortion fund serving people in Alabama, Florida, and Mississippi—to pause operations for nearly three years.

But Yellowhammer didn’t back down without a fight. In July 2023, the organization sued Marshall in federal court—and won in March 2025. A federal district court ruled that Alabama cannot criminally charge people for helping residents access legal abortion in other states. The decision was a major victory for both the Yellowhammer Fund and the health-care workers and volunteers who feared prosecution for helping people obtain an abortion.

Yellowhammer reopened immediately after winning the lawsuit.

“Freedom of speech, specifically our use of money and mutual aid to engage in protected speech, and our right to travel, is what was used to decide our lawsuit in our favor,” Kelsea McLain, Yellowhammer Fund’s health-care access director, said.

The case underscores the real dangers of these legal strategies: Even if anti-abortion tactics ultimately lose in court, some patients will lose reproductive care in the meantime.

Abortion funds, especially in the South, are sometimes the only lifeline for people who can’t afford to travel hundreds of miles to the nearest clinic, take unpaid time off work, or arrange child care. For low-income people, people of color, undocumented people, and those living in rural areas, losing that support can make the difference between accessing care and carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term.

AUL’s report mapped out a flexible legal strategy that could be used to target anyone connected to abortion care. The approach is designed not only to punish providers, but also to intimidate those who support them.

For example, if money for abortion-related services was transferred electronically, prosecutors could try to stack on wire fraud charges in a RICO-Comstock case. If abortion pills were sent via mail, mail fraud charges could come into play.

With a sympathetic judge, these cases could advance to the discovery phase and lead to a long, costly legal battle, said Jamie E. Wright, a top Los Angeles trial attorney.

“This strategy effectively ties up the abortion fund in pretrial hell,” Wright said. “No ruling needed. Just bleed them dry.”

Wright does not try RICO cases. But she discerns a familiar strategy in AUL’s legal recommendations.

“It’s not just about winning the case. It’s about punishing the infrastructure of abortion access,” she said.

High penalty in RICO cases

RICO’s power lies in its reach, explained Jennifer Ecklund, an attorney who specializes in health-care disputes and civil RICO cases. It doesn’t merely target individual crimes—it also punishes the act of participating in a broader, ongoing criminal enterprise.

A person can face RICO charges if they help direct, organize, finance, or otherwise contribute to a group’s illegal activities—even if they didn’t personally carry out every offense, Ecklund said. Such offenses could include fraud, bribery, or drug trafficking.

“RICO is used to essentially triple damages in any circumstance where a case can be made for an organized conspiracy to violate the enumerated laws, which for most abortion funds and mutual aid orgs, could be an existential threat,” Ecklund said.

“Triple damages” refers to the provision allowing courts to order organizations found liable in civil RICO cases to pay three times the amount of actual damages.

For example, if an abortion fund is found liable for $100,000 in a civil RICO case, the court could force it to pay $300,000, plus the plaintiff’s legal costs. This can put even more financial strain on a small, nonprofit abortion fund and drain it of its resources.

But, Ecklund said, courts tend to be cautious about civil RICO claims brought by private parties. Successful cases without a parallel criminal prosecution are rare. Still, typically, anti-abortion groups strategically file cases in jurisdictions seen as more sympathetic to their arguments.

That kind of financial threat creates a massive chilling effect on anyone who might otherwise provide or support abortion-related services.

Use of RICO balloons

Although RICO was designed to combat organized crime syndicates, attorneys note its scope has stretched over time. Courts have applied state and federal RICO statutes not just to mob activity, but to crimes ranging from Wall Street fraud to celebrities’ alleged misconduct.

A recent use of RICO beyond its initial scope is rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs’ high-profile trial over alleged sex trafficking. In September 2024, prosecutors charged Combs with sex trafficking, transportation with intent to engage in prostitution, and racketeering conspiracy, alleging his business empire enabled these illegal activities. He was ultimately acquitted of the racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges, and found guilty of the prostitution-related crimes.

RICO is powerful because it makes an “entire organization responsible for facilitating multiple illegal acts alleged in the indictment,” Ross Goodman, a Las Vegas criminal defense attorney with experience handling RICO cases, said.

RICO convictions also carry harsher punishments.

“A successful RICO conviction allows for the dismantling of a business empire through asset forfeiture and provides for a lengthier prison sentence,” Goodman said.

He added that anti-abortion activists might, in theory, try arguing that abortion funds are part of an “enterprise” engaged in conduct that violates federal or state law.

For example, Goodman said, states with abortion restrictions or bans could claim abortion funds are “aiding and abetting illegal abortions by providing financial and logistical support.”

However, helping someone access a legal abortion, even in another state, is not automatically considered a “predicate act”—that is, an action RICO law recognizes as a crime that could be used to build a civil or criminal case.

Goodman said anti-abortion plaintiffs would need to stretch existing laws to meet that bar. Doing so would require aggressive legal theories—and those, in turn, would face major constitutional barriers.

The future of abortion access

On the flipside, abortion rights advocates have themselves used civil RICO claims to defend against legal attacks.

In January 2016, Planned Parenthood filed a federal lawsuit in San Francisco against anti-abortion activist David Daleiden, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), and several of Daleiden’s associates. The nonprofit alleged the defendants had carried out a deceptive undercover campaign, including posing as representatives of a fake biomedical company, using false identities, and secretly recording private meetings, in an effort to falsely suggest Planned Parenthood was profiting from selling fetal tissue.

Planned Parenthood argued that Daleiden, CMP, and their associates operated as a coordinated enterprise, committing multiple illegal acts—such as fraud, trespass, breach of contract, and unauthorized recordings—in violation of RICO to harm the organization’s reputation and restrict access to reproductive health services.

In 2019, a jury sided with Planned Parenthood, finding the defendants violated RICO. The nonprofit was awarded more than $2 million in damages.

Here, that decision came down on the side of abortion providers. But in a different courtroom run by a different judge, a future lawsuit grounded in similar arguments could be used to punish an abortion clinic like Planned Parenthood.

The post How RICO Could Be Weaponized Against Abortion Providers and Funds appeared first on Rewire News Group.