Texas has sued a New York doctor for allegedly prescribing abortion pills to a Dallas-area woman, launching the first known legal challenge of its kind, which will test what happens when two states’ abortion laws conflict.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit accuses Dr Margaret Daley Carpenter of New York of posting the medication to the 20-year-old woman.
It is alleged she took the pills when she was nine-weeks pregnant, violating Texas’s strict abortion bans, which outlaw nearly all abortions.
But Dr Carpenter may be protected by New York’s so-called shield laws, which aim to legally safeguard doctors who provide abortion pills to patients in other states. She could not be reached for comment.
New York’s shield law, like seven other Democratic states with similar legislation, means the state will not co-operate with any other state’s effort to prosecute, or otherwise penalise a doctor for providing abortion pills, as long as the doctor complies with New York law.
In New York, abortion is legal up until to point of foetal viability, around 24 weeks of pregnancy, and after that point in more limited circumstances.
Paxton’s lawsuit says Dr Carpenter is not licensed as a physician in the state of Texas and was therefore “unauthorised” to prescribe the drugs.
According to the legal action, the Dallas-area mother became pregnant in mid-May this year and did not tell the biological father.
“The mother did not have any life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from the pregnancy that placed her at risk of death or any serious risk of substantial impairment,” says the lawsuit.
According to the legal action, the woman who took the abortion pills, mifepristone and misoprostol, experienced “severe bleeding” and asked the biological father to be taken to hospital on 16 July.
He became suspicious and later discovered the abortion drugs at home.
The legal action does not say if the woman experienced any long-term medical complications.
When Roe v Wade was overturned in June 2022 – effectively ending a nationwide guarantee to abortion access – states moved to enact varying abortion legislation. Most Republican-controlled states, including Texas, implemented abortion bans.
But abortion pills – now used in more than half of abortions in the US – have acted as an effective workaround to the bans, with thousands of pills flowing into states where they are banned through the mail from doctors in abortion-friendly states, or other countries.
Dr Carpenter is the founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, a national group that helps doctors in states with shield laws provide appointments and abortion medication to patients in states with strict bans.
Paxton is asking a Texas court to stop Dr Carpenter from violating Texas law, and order her to pay $100,000 (£79,000) for every violation of the state’s abortion ban.
