A Planned Parenthood worker unlocked her clinic doors after dark for an illegal abortion.
The woman who reported it was Planned Parenthood's own human resources chief.
Colyer found out exactly what Planned Parenthood's whistleblower promise was actually worth.
A Sunday Night Call And An Unlocked Basement Door
Jacqueline Colyer spent years running human resources for Planned Parenthood Great Rivers.
She was not looking for a scandal.
According to her new lawsuit, one landed on her desk anyway.
Colyer alleges that in 2022, Dr. Colleen McNicholas – then the affiliate's chief medical officer – performed an unauthorized abortion on a woman roughly 28 weeks pregnant, well past the point Illinois law treats as viability.
The lawsuit says the call came around 7 p.m. on a Sunday.
McNicholas called Jamia Swift, a subordinate of employee Kris Winkleman, and had her drive to the Fairview Heights, Illinois clinic to let her in.
The abortion happened in the basement, after hours, with no scheduled appointment and no daytime staff around to see it.
Winkleman eventually told Colyer what had happened.
Colyer did what Planned Parenthood's own policy told her to do.
She filed an anonymous tip through the organization's third-party reporting system, ReportIt, on July 10, 2024.
She asked investigators to pull the security cameras and the after-hours key-fob logs to find out who let McNicholas in, who administered the anesthesia, and who locked the doors when it was over.
Inside The Wrongful Termination Lawsuit Planned Parenthood Didn't Want Filed
Planned Parenthood's own whistleblower policy promised her confidentiality and protection from retaliation.
Instead, the lawsuit says, she was pulled off the matter almost immediately.
Richard Muniz – Planned Parenthood Great Rivers' interim president, general counsel, and chief compliance officer, all at once – took over the investigation himself.
Three weeks later, a second anonymous complaint landed describing an abortion "provided in the basement of our clinic on a Sunday," violating the law and coming late in the woman's pregnancy.
Colyer got her answer fast.
Muniz issued her the only written discipline of her entire career, a formal warning accusing her of insubordination and lying.
She didn't back down.
On Sept. 4, 2024, she went over Muniz's head straight to board president Sheila Greenbaum, repeated her report, and told her she feared retaliation.
Two days later she went on medical leave, and Muniz cut off her access to the building.
She came back to work on Dec. 9, 2024.
Muniz fired her that same day.
"I'm sure you know what's happening. You are not a good fit," Muniz told her, according to the complaint.
He then pushed her to sign away her right to sue in exchange for a severance check, the lawsuit says.
She refused, and Planned Parenthood had someone in her old job before the week was out.
Colleen McNicholas, Planned Parenthood's Chief Medical Officer, Now Faces These Allegations
Colleen McNicholas is not some anonymous clinic physician.
She testified before the House Oversight Committee in 2019 as Planned Parenthood's chief medical officer, defending the organization's abortion access in front of the entire country.
The woman Colyer accuses of sneaking a 28-week abortion through a basement door after hours built her name lecturing Congress about protecting patients.
Illinois already lets abortion happen at almost any point in pregnancy, but even that law draws a line once a baby could survive outside the womb.
Past that point, the law requires a documented medical reason, a second physician on standby for the baby, and a real paper trail – not a Sunday-night phone call and an unlocked side door.
Colyer isn't the first Planned Parenthood employee to learn what happens when you take the organization's own rules seriously.
In 2019, an Arizona court awarded former Planned Parenthood clinic director Mayra Rodriguez $3 million after she was fired for reporting a doctor's high complication rates and falsified patient records.
Planned Parenthood lost that case in court and is now facing the same accusation again, this time over a nearly full-term child.
Colyer's attorneys argue Missouri law never allowed her employer to fire her for reporting something illegal, and that's exactly the fight headed to court now.
Richard Muniz ran the investigation into his own employer's alleged crime, then fired the woman who tried to expose it.
He's the one who will have to answer for that decision under oath, in a courtroom, not a compliance office he controlled himself.
Somewhere in this story is a baby who was 28 weeks into a pregnancy that could have ended in a live birth, whom McNicholas allegedly aborted in a basement on a Sunday night with nobody scheduled to be watching.
Jacqueline Colyer is the only reason anyone outside those clinic walls knows that child ever existed.
Sources:
- Staff, "Planned Parenthood Staffer Fired After Reporting Illegal 28-Week Abortion," LifeNews.com, Aug. 26, 2026.
- Staff, "Former Planned Parenthood Exec Fired For Reporting Illegal Abortion," Live Action, 2026.
- Caleb Parke, "Planned Parenthood whistleblower gets $3M from Arizona court after wrongful termination," Fox News, Aug. 19, 2019.
- Colleen McNicholas, Testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, Nov. 14, 2019.
