By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) -Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Friday sued a New York doctor for allegedly providing a Texas woman with abortion pills by telemedicine.
The lawsuit by the Republican attorney general, which appeared to be the first of its kind, could offer a test of conservative states’ power to stop abortion pills from reaching their residents.
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.
“As other states move to attack those who provide or obtain abortion care, New York is proud to be a safe haven for abortion access,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “We will always protect our providers from unjust attempts to punish them for doing their job and we will never cower in the face of intimidation or threats.”
In the lawsuit, filed in the District Court of Collin County, Paxton said that New Paltz, New York, doctor Margaret Carpenter prescribed and provided mifepristone and misoprostol, the two drugs used in medication abortion, to a Texas woman via telemedicine.
Medication abortion accounts for more than half of U.S. abortions. It has drawn increasing attention since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision allowing states to ban abortion, which more than 20 have done.
The woman went to the hospital after experiencing bleeding as a complication of taking the drugs, which were subsequently discovered by her partner, according to the lawsuit.
Paxton claimed that Carpenter violated Texas’s abortion law and its occupational licensing law by practicing medicine in the state despite not being licensed there. He is seeking an injunction barring her from further violations of Texas’s abortion ban and at least $100,000 in civil penalties for each past violation.
Carpenter is a member of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, which supports nationwide access to abortion through telemedicine, and helped start Hey Jane, an online telehealth clinic offering abortion pills, according to the coalition’s website. She could not immediately be reached for comment.
(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Daniel Wallis and Alistair Bell)
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