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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 ban on nearly all abortions.
But Dr Carpenter, who could not be reached for comment, 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.
The legislation means New York 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.
New York is one of eight Democratic-led states with shield laws.
Abortion is legal in New York up until the point of foetal viability, around 24 weeks of pregnancy, and after that point with restrictions.
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, which were mifepristone and misoprostol.
According to the legal action, the Dallas-area mother became pregnant in mid-May this year.
“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 experienced “severe bleeding”.
She asked the biological father, who had been unaware of the pregnancy, 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 the US Supreme Court overturned a nationwide guarantee to abortion access in June 2022, states moved to enact varying abortion legislation. Most Republican-controlled states, including Texas, implemented bans.
But abortion pills – now used in more than half of abortions in the US – have acted as a workaround, with thousands of pills flowing into states where they are banned 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.
