Texas sued a New York doctor who prescribed abortion pills

Prescription pills in out-of-state abortion laws: what they can do to protect the public and save the children’s rights in the U.S.

After the Supreme Court legalized abortion, many Republican-controlled states began implementing tighter restrictions while many Democratic states made their residents’ privacy a priority. The states that have gone further are providing legal protections for health care providers who prescribe contraceptives in states where abortion is banned. That scenario makes up for about 10% of all abortions in the U.S., a survey for the Society of Family Planning found.

Louisiana was the first state to reclassify drugs as controlled dangerous substances. There are more steps to take to access them.

“I started to think about how we might be able to both provide an extra deterrent to companies violating the criminal law and provide a remedy for the family of the unborn children”, said Tennessee state Rep.

The state said the Texas woman received a combination of two drugs that are generally used in medication abortions. To fight contraction caused by the second drug, Misoprostol, mifepristone primes the uterus by blocking the hormone progesterone. The two-drug regimen can be used to end a pregnant woman’s pregnancies, but it can also be used to treat other conditions such as hemorrhage and induce labor.

This is not the first time Texas has sued an out of state doctor for providing abortion services to a Texas patient. Notably, New York, where Carpenter is based, has a “shield law” that’s designed to protect doctors who prescribe and send abortion pills to patients in other states, including those that, like Texas, have outlawed abortion.

As the number of abortions increases across the U.S, it is likely due to online and over the phone prescriptions. Most abortions in the U.S. involve pills rather than procedures.

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Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, said a challenge to shield laws, which blue states started adopting in 2023, has been anticipated.

“Will doctors be more afraid to mail pills into Texas, even if they might be protected by shield laws because they don’t know if they’re protected by shield laws?” Ziegler said in an interview Friday.

Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit against Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedecine, in Collin County civil court on Thursday. Carpenter doesn’t face criminal charges, but the state is seeking up to a $250,000 fine.

Paxton said that the 20-year-old woman who received the pills ended up in a hospital with complications. The father of the unborn child, described as the “biological father” in the state’s filing, learned about the pregnancy and the abortion after that.

Even if Paxton prevails in Texas court, Ziegler said, it’s unclear how that could be enforced. “Is he going to go to New York to enforce it?” she asked.

A call and email from the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine were not answered, nor was a phone message left for the co-medical director.

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