Far-right Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York doctor on Friday that he accused of unlawfully providing a Texas woman abortion pills in violation of the conservative state’s strict abortion laws.
The state’s three-term Republican attorney general claimed in the lawsuit filed Friday that physician Margaret Daley Carpenter violated a Texas law banning a physician from mailing or prescribing online any abortion-inducing drugs to state residents, according to media reports.
The filing puts into motion a legal showdown that is already being described as the first major court challenge to a Democratic-led state’s abortion-protecting shield laws after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Washington Post reported.
“In Texas, we treasure the health and lives of mothers and babies, and this is why out-of-state doctors may not illegally and dangerously prescribe abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents,” Paxton said in a statement Friday. Paxton added that the doctor, who founded the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, “caused serious harm to this patient.”
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“This doctor prescribed abortion-inducing drugs –unauthorized, over telemedicine – causing her patient to end up in the hospital with serious complications.”
Paxton's lawsuit seeks to prohibit Carpenter from “violating Texas law” and calls for civil penalties of at least $100,000 per violation.
New York is one of a handful of states with shield laws protecting health care providers who treat patients by mail in states that ban or restrict abortion pills. New York Attorney General Letitia James wasted no time striking back at Paxton’s legal attack, according to the Post.
“We will always protect our providers from unjust attempts to punish them for doing their job and we will never cower in the face of intimidation or threats,” James told the publication in a statement. “I will continue to defend reproductive freedom and justice for New Yorkers, including from out-of-state anti-choice attacks.”
