Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton files suit lawsuit A lawsuit against a New York doctor alleges he violated state law by prescribing abortion pills to a Texan through a telemedicine appointment.
Both surgical and medical abortions are banned in Texas, and Friday's case is the first legal test of what happens when the state's abortion laws conflict with each other.
Like many other Democratic-leaning states, New York protects health care providers from out-of-state investigation and prosecution if they prescribe or send abortion pills to people who live in states with abortion restrictions. A shield law has been introduced.
Paxton alleges in the lawsuit that Margaret Daley Carpenter, a physician and co-founder of New York's Telemedicine Abortion Coalition (ACT), prescribed abortion pills to a 20-year-old pregnant woman in Collin during a telemedicine appointment and then mailed them to her. He is accused of doing so. In a Texas county, it caused an “adverse event” that later led to a medical abortion.
The group said ACT is an advocacy group created after the 2022 Roe v. Wade reversal to help people seeking abortion care and telemedicine abortion providers be licensed in states where the law protects them. It plays a role in connecting clinicians with different backgrounds. Website.
ACT has not yet responded to a request for comment from The Hill regarding the lawsuit.
Carpenter also works with AidAccess and Hey Jane, which provide abortion care, contraception and emergency contraception through telemedicine.
According to the complaint, Carpenter's 20-year-old patient received two boxes of abortion pills along with instructions after a telemedicine visit this spring.
Medication abortions typically involve two drugs: mifepristone, which stops the pregnancy from progressing, and misoprostol, which induces spasms and bleeding to empty the uterus.
The first was a box containing 200 mg of mifepristone labeled “#1” with instructions to take one pill by mouth. The second was a bottle of misoprostol 200μg tablets with instructions to take 4 tablets after taking the mifepristone tablets.
The patient began bleeding profusely in July and asked the “biological father of the fetus” to take him to the hospital, according to the complaint. After the woman was treated at a Collin County hospital, “the biological father of the fetus was advised that the fetus' mother was experiencing bleeding or heavy bleeding as she was nine weeks pregnant,” the complaint states. It is written. .
The lawsuit does not say whether the abortion was successful or what health damage she suffered after undergoing the medical abortion.
Paxton is seeking an injunction to prevent Carpenter from continuing to provide telemedicine abortion care in Texas and to pay her $100,000 for each violation of the state's near-total abortion ban.
In response to the lawsuit, New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement that the state will always protect abortion providers from “unreasonable attempts” to punish them for their work.
“Abortion is and will continue to be legal and protected in New York,” she said. “We will never flinch in the face of intimidation or threats.”
