A Texas state judge on Thursday ordered a New York doctor to pay a penalty of at least US$100,000 and stop providing abortion pills to women in Texas, in a win for the state’s Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton.
The case is an early test of conservative states’ power to prosecute doctors outside their borders and stop abortion medication from reaching their residents, and the ability of states that support abortion rights to shield providers from such prosecutions.
Judge Bryan Gantt in Collin County, Texas, entered a default judgement against Margaret Carpenter, of New Paltz, New York, after she failed to respond to the state’s civil lawsuit alleging she illegally prescribed mifepristone and misoprostol, the two drugs used in medication abortion, to a Texas woman via telemedicine.
Photo: Reuters
Carpenter, a founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, did not enter an appearance in the case and could not be reached by Reuters for comment.
The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. It has previously said that Paxton’s lawsuit puts women in harm’s way by threatening access to safe and effective reproductive healthcare.
Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
Carpenter has also been indicted by a Louisiana grand jury for prescribing an abortion pill that was taken by a teenager there, in what appeared to be the first time a state criminally charged a doctor in another state for prescribing abortion drugs.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, on Thursday said that she would not sign the extradition order she received from her counterpart in Louisiana seeking Carpenter’s arrest.
Medication abortion accounts for more than half of US abortions. It has drawn increasing attention since the US Supreme Court’s 2022 decision allowing states to ban abortion, which more than 20 states, including Texas, have done.
New York is among the Democratic-led states that have passed so-called shield laws aiming to protect doctors who provide abortion pills to patients in other states.
The law says New York will not cooperate with another state’s effort to prosecute, sue or otherwise penalize a doctor for providing the pills, as long as the doctor complies with New York law.
In the Texas lawsuit against Carpenter, which appeared to be the first of its kind, Paxton’s office alleged the doctor violated the state’s abortion law and its occupational licensing law by practicing medicine in the state, despite not being licensed there.
The patient whom Carpenter allegedly prescribed the medication to went to a hospital after experiencing bleeding as a complication of taking the drugs, which were subsequently discovered by her partner, the lawsuit said.
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