By Maria Ortiz
Dec 13, 2024, 18:42 PM EST
Texas has sued a doctor New York by prescribe abortion pills to a woman living near Dallas in a teleconsultation.
It is about one of the first challenges in the United States against the laws that Democratic-controlled states passed to protect doctors after federal protection of the right to abortion by the Supreme Court with the repeal of Roe v. Wade.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit Thursday in Collin County, and it was announced Friday.
The demand accuses Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of New York of violating Texas law by providing the drugs to a Texas patient and seeking damages of up to $250,000. No criminal charges have been filed.
These prescriptions, done online and over the phone, are a key reason the number of abortions has increased across the United States. even since bans on abortion rights in several states began to take effect.
Most abortions in the United States involve pills rather than surgical procedures.
Paxton said the 20-year-old woman who received the pills (mifepristone and misoprostol, which are typically used in medication abortions) ended up in the hospital with complications.
It was only after that, the state said in its filing, that the man described as “the biological father of the unborn child” learned of the pregnancy and abortion.
“In Texas, we value the health and lives of mothers and babies, and that is why doctors in other states cannot illegally and dangerously prescribe abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents,” Paxton said in a statement.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement that the state “will protect our providers from unfair attempts to punish them for doing their jobs.”
“Abortion is, and will remain, legal and protected in New York. As other states move to attack those who provide or obtain abortion services, New York is proud to be a safe haven for abortion access,” James said in the statement.
Anti-abortion activists, who legally challenged the Biden administration’s prescribing rules on mifepristone by taking the process all the way to the Supreme Court, have been preparing provocative and unusual forms of further limit access to the abortion pill when Trump takes office next year.
They are planning challenge the use of abortion pills and seek ways to restrict it under a conservative U.S. Supreme Court backed by a Republican-controlled Congress and White House.
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