Texas is suing a New York doctor for prescribing abortion inducing medication to a Dallas-area woman, one of the first challenges to a shield law that Democratic-led states passed to protect physicians after the US Supreme Court ended a constitutional right to an abortion.
The lawsuit announced Friday by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton says Dr. Maggie Carpenter is breaking another law by seeing Texans through telehealth appointments without a license to practice medicine in the state.
Carpenter, co-medical director and founder of Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday.
Filed Thursday in Collin County, the lawsuit seeks to hit Carpenter with a fine of up to $250,000.
In July, a 20-year-old woman went to a hospital with severe bleeding in her ninth week of pregnancy and lost the child, the lawsuit said. Upon returning from the hospital, the father of the unborn child discovered boxes of abortion-inducing drugs mifepristone and misoprostol that Paxton’s office says Carpenter prescribed to the woman.
Texas prohibits abortions except to protect the mother from a life-threatening physical condition.
“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,” Paxton (R) said in a statement Friday.
The case is Texas v. Carpenter, Tex. Dist. Ct., No. 471-08943-2024, 12/12/24.
To contact the reporter on this story:
To contact the editor responsible for this story: