A New York County official on Thursday prevented Texas from filing a legal action against a New York doctor for prescription and sending pills to a Texas woman.
An unprecedented movement floods the transnational abortion wars at a new level, setting the stage for a high -stage legal battle between states that prohibit abortion and states that support the rights of abortions.
The controversy is widely expected to reach the Supreme Court, which has Texas, which has an almost comprehensive abortion ban against New York, which has a shield law intended to protect the abortions that send medicines to patients to other states.
New York is one of the eight states that have adopted “a shield laws of teleproological abortion”, since the Supreme Court has overturned the national right to abortion in 2022, laws prevent employees from issuing abortion providers in other states or to respond to other states and other laws. Such cases.
The action of the New York official is the first time a law on the shield of abortions has been used to refuse to impose an external crisis.
This case includes Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of New Paltz, NY, which works with telemedicine abortion organizations to provide abortion pills across the country. In December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Dr. Carpenter, who is not licensed in Texas, accusing her of sending abortion pills to a Texas woman, violating the state ban.
Dr. Carpenter and her lawyers did not respond to the lawsuit and did not appear for a court hearing last month in Texas. Judge Bryan Gantt of the Collin County Regional Court has issued a default ruling, ordering Dr. Carpenter to pay a $ 113,000 sentence and stop sending medication to Texas.
On Thursday, citing New York City Shield Act, ULSTER County County in Kingston, New York, Taylor Bruck, said he would not grant Texas’ proposal that seeks to impose Collin County’s class. He also refused to allow Texas to submit a summons that tried to force Dr. Carpenter to pay the sentence and comply with Texas’ decision.
“According to the New York State Act, I refused this testimony and will refuse any similar deposits that may come to our office,” Mr Bruck said in a statement. “Since this decision is likely to lead to further differences, I should avoid discussing specific details about the situation.”
Mr Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, vowed to push. “I am outraged that New York will refuse to allow Texas to continue imposing a political crisis against a radical blunt that delivers illegal state -of -the -art drugs,” he said in a statement. “New York is destroying the Constitution to hide Lawbreakers from justice and must end, I will not stop my efforts to enforce the Laws of Texas’s life that protects our unborn children and our mothers.”
Legal experts said one possible next step would be for Texas to submit a challenge for the Shield Act in a state or federal court in New York.
New York Attorney General Letitia James had previously sent guidance to courts and officials across the state, directing them to follow the shield law and indicate how they could comply and what specific actions were banned.
“I applaud the ULSTER County employee to do what is right,” Ms James said in a statement. “The New York Shield Act was created to protect patients and providers from anti-state anti-state attacks and we will not allow anyone to undermine the ability of healthcare providers to provide the necessary care to their patients.
Texas was the first state with a ban on abortion to launch legal actions against abortions in states with shield laws. In January, the first criminal charges against an abortion of shields were deposited in a second state, Louisiana. In this case, a large jury issued a criminal indictment, also against Dr. Carpenter, accusing her of violating the ban on the almost total abortion of Louisiana by sending pills to this state.
Last month, Louisiana officials issued a issuance order for Dr. Carpenter, which was immediately rejected by New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
“I will not sign a publishing order that came from Louisiana’s ruler – not now, not never,” Ms Hochul said.
Dr. Carpenter and her lawyers have not commented on the case of Texas or Louisiana. The abortion coalition for telemedicine, an organization Dr. Carpenter he founded has issued statements in response to cases. “Shield laws are essential for ensuring and establishing abortion care regardless of the postal code or ability to pay,” the coalition said. “They are fundamental to ensure that everyone can access reproductive health care as a human right.”
Television shield laws have become a key strategy for supporters of abortion rights. According to these laws, which have been used by the summer of 2023, health care providers in states where abortion is legal sending more than 10,000 abortion pills per month to patients in states with abortion or restrictions.
Texas’ treatment accuses Dr. Carpenter of providing a 20 -year -old woman with two medicines used in a standardized abortion, Mifepristone and Misoprostol. It is usually exhausted within 12 weeks in pregnancy, MIFEPristone excludes a hormone required for pregnancy development and misoprostol, taken 24 to 48 hours later, causes contraction similar to miscarriage.
According to a complaint filed by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, the woman, who was nine weeks pregnant, asked her “biological father of her unborn child” to take her to the emergency room in July “due to bleeding or severe bleeding”. The man “suspected that the biological mother had actually did something to contribute to miscarriage,” the costume said and returned home to Collin County, where he “discovered the two above drugs from Carpenter”.
At the hearing of the Collin County Court last month, Ernest C. Garcia, head of the Department of Administrative Law at the Attorney General’s Office, said the man “then filed a complaint to the Office of the Attorney General of Texas”.
