A New York county clerk on Thursday blocked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s effort to take legal action against a New York doctor for prescribing and sending abortion pills to a Texas patient.
The escalating dispute between Texas and New York over the Empire state’s so-called shield law, which protects healthcare professionals from prosecution in states where abortion is illegal or severely limited, is likely eventually to make its way to the Supreme Court.
The case involves Dr. Margaret Carpenter of upstate New York, who prescribes the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol to patients across the country with telemedicine practices that do abortion consultations.
Paxton in December launched a civil action against Carpenter, who is not licensed in Texas, accusing her of sending abortion pills to a patient in Texas, violating the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.
When Carpenter and her lawyers did not attend a court hearing in Texas last month, Judge Bryan Gantt of Collin County District Court ordered Carpenter to pay a penalty of $113,000 and to stop sending abortion pills to Texas.
On Thursday, Taylor Bruck, the acting clerk of Ulster County, New York, cited the state’s shield law in denying Texas’s motion to enforce the Collin County order.
Bruck’s decision followed a directive from New York Attorney General Letitia James from late January outlining the enforcement procedure of the state’s protective statutes for healthcare providers.
Paxton said in a statement, “New York is shredding the constitution to hide lawbreakers from justice.”
“I am outraged that New York would refuse to allow Texas to pursue enforcement of a civil judgment against a radical abortionist illegally peddling dangerous drugs across state lines,” said Paxton.
New York is one of eight states that has enacted a shield law for telemedicine prescribers of the abortion pill mifepristone since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade federal abortion protections in 2022.
According to the Society of Family Planning, approximately 40,000 people in 2023 in states with bans or gestational age restrictions on abortions received abortion medications through telehealth clinics in states with shield laws.
Abortion rights organizations largely attribute the rise in abortion rates post-Roe to the ability of women in states that have near-totally banned the procedure to procure mifepristone online.
In February, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, grand jury indicted Carpenter on criminal charges for providing abortion pills in a case involving a mother who coerced her pregnant child into a medication abortion.
ABORTION GROUPS WANT TO SEE STATE BANS WORK, IN PART
Prosecutors in that case say that Carpenter did not have any consultation or interaction with the pregnant minor, who experienced complications and was treated in the emergency room.
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) said her administration would protect Carpenter from extradition to Louisiana in the criminal case.
