Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) is suing a New York doctor for allegedly prescribing abortion pills to a Texas woman in violation of state law, breaking the abortion shield enacted by some blue states. It was the first major legal challenge to the law. After Roe v. Wade is overturned in 2022.
Paxton announced Friday that he has filed a complaint in Collin County, outside Dallas, accusing Margaret Daley Carpenter of violating a Texas law that prohibits the mailing or online prescription of abortion pills to Texas residents. Carpenter, a New Paltz, New York, doctor who is affiliated with the Telemedicine Abortion Coalition, is also accused of practicing medicine without a license in Texas, according to the complaint.
“In Texas, we value the health and lives of mothers and babies, which is why out-of-state doctors should not prescribe illegal and dangerous abortion-inducing drugs to Texans,” Paxton said in a statement Friday. said.
Carpenter could not be reached for comment Friday, but New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) quickly fired back at Paxton’s efforts.
“We will always protect our providers from unwarranted attempts to punish them for doing their jobs, and we will never shrink from threats or intimidation,” James said in part in a statement. “I will continue to defend reproductive freedom and justice for New Yorkers, including against anti-choice attacks from outside the state.”
In 2023, New York enacted a shield law to protect health care workers who mail abortion pills to states that ban or restrict them. Medication abortions now account for the majority of abortions in the United States. Studies have shown that two drugs commonly used for this procedure, mifepristone and misoprostol, are safe and effective.
Paxton’s charges signal the beginning of a complex interstate battle between Texas and New York’s conflicting abortion laws, with Democratic-led states like New York’s protective laws It could undermine bans on mail-order abortion pills in conservative states like New York.
