A Texas man has filed a wrongful death lawsuit accusing three women of helping his ex-wife obtain abortion pills, in one of the first major legal challenges under a state abortion ban since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade.
Plaintiff Marcus Silva filed the lawsuit on Thursday last week in Galveston County, Texas, alleging that three Texas women are liable for wrongful death because they helped his ex-wife obtain abortion pills to terminate a pregnancy in July last year.
The civil lawsuit is seeking damages of US$1 million against each woman.
Photo: AP
Since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in June last year, eliminating federal abortion rights, Texas has been one of about a dozen states that has enforced a total abortion ban.
It is illegal to “aid or abet” abortions in Texas, which the lawsuit claims defendants Jackie Noyola, Amy Carpenter and Aracely Garcia did.
The defendants could not immediately be reached for comment.
“Defendants Noyola, Carpenter and Garcia all knew that they were aiding or abetting a self-managed abortion, which is a wrongful act and a criminal act of murder under Texas law,” the lawsuit argued.
Brittni Silva, who divorced her husband in February, according to the lawsuit, is not a defendant and is exempt from criminal or civil liability under state law.
Photos of text messages apparently between Brittni Silva, Noyola and Carpenter, attached as exhibitions in the court documents, show the women discussing Brittni Silva’s pregnancy and her desire to get abortion pills in Texas.
“If I don’t have to travel that would make things so much easier,” Brittni Silva wrote, the screenshots show.
Noyola and Carpenter offered links to Web sites where people can order the two-pill regimen, and they offered to let Brittni Silva self-manage her abortion at their homes, the screenshots show.
The lawsuit alleges that Garcia, the third defendant, facilitated the delivery of the pills to Houston, Texas.
Marcus Silva is represented by lawyers Briscoe Cain, who is a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives, and Jonathan Mitchell, who is credited as an architect of the six-week ban in Texas that took effect in September 2021.
That law banned abortion starting at six weeks of pregnancy, and it introduced an enforcement mechanism that allows citizens to file civil lawsuits against anyone they believed contravened the law by providing, aiding or abetting an abortion to a woman past that point, for damages exceeding US$10,000.
A status hearing in the case has been set for June 8.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS