Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a Dallas-area woman who wound up in the emergency room with severe bleeding, setting up a first-of-its-kind challenge to a blue-state abortion shield law.
Mr. Paxton announced Friday that his office is seeking a temporary injunction to block Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter “from illegally prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents and illegally practicing medicine in the State of Texas.”
The complaint filed in Collin County District Court also asks for $100,000 for each violation of Texas law and attorney’s fees.
“In this case, an out-of-state doctor violated the law and caused serious harm to this patient. This doctor prescribed abortion-inducing drugs — unauthorized, over telemedicine — causing her patient to end up in the hospital with serious complications,” said Mr. Paxton.
Texas law requires doctors who treat residents to have a state medical license, and bans physicians or medical suppliers from “providing any abortion-inducing drugs by courier, delivery, or mail service,” said the attorney general’s office.
Dr. Carpenter, co-medical director and founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, which provides abortion pills via telehealth to women in “under resourced areas,” is licensed to practice in New York, not Texas.
“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,” Mr. Paxton said.
The coalition said in a statement that “Ken Paxton is prioritizing his anti-abortion agenda over the health and well-being of women by attempting to shut down telemedicine abortion nationwide.”
“By threatening access to safe and effective reproductive health care, he is putting women directly in harm’s way,” the group said. “Let us be clear: the FDA-approved medicine in the two-step protocol for a medication abortion has been proven safe and effective globally for decades. It is an essential part of women’s healthcare.”
In July, the 20-year-old Texas woman was taken to a hospital in Collin County with severe bleeding by the biological father of the unborn child, telling doctors that she “had been” nine weeks’ pregnant, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Collin County District Court.
The father, who had been unaware that she was pregnant, found the two abortion drugs — mifepristone and misoprostol — prescribed by Dr. Carpenter upon returning to their residence.
“Carpenter provided abortion-inducing drugs to the pregnant Collin County woman, which caused an adverse event or abortion complication and resulted in a medical abortion,” said the complaint. “Carpenter’s conduct violates the Texas Health and Safety Code’s prohibition on prescribing abortion-inducing drugs via telemedicine.”
Katie Daniels, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America director of legal affairs, said she hoped Mr. Paxton’s example “will embolden other pro-life leaders and begin the undoing of the mail-order abortion drug racket.”
“For the mail-order abortion industry that sells high-risk drugs without any in-person doctor visit, life is cheap and ‘DIY’ abortion highly profitable,” said Ms. Daniel. “Thanks to extreme blue-state politicians who shield them, abortionists in states like New York openly violate the protective laws of pro-life states, killing unborn children and sending women to the emergency room in dire condition — all while sitting comfortably thousands of miles away.”
The two-pill abortion protocol is now the most common method of U.S. pregnancy termination, accounting for 63% in 2023, according to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute.
Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director turned pro-life activist, said that “I hope Texas is successful in their lawsuit.”
“I wish someone had stood up for me when I went through my own medication abortion,” said Ms. Johnson, founder of And Then There Were None ministries. “I thought I was going to die, that my parents were going to find me dead in the bathroom from losing so much blood. No one told me about the horrendous side effects. I was totally alone and I would never wish that experience on anyone.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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