The Abortion Wars Enter A New Front
As many were celebrating the holidays, Attorney General Ken Paxton was amping up another round of abortion-related lawsuits in the state. Last month his office announced a lawsuit against a doctor in New York for providing “abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents in direct violation of state law.”
Paxton’s lawsuit represents a new front in the battle of abortion rights. New York has enacted a shield law which is supposed to protect medical providers from lawsuits and investigations from other states. The doctor who Paxton is targeting is part of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, an organization that connects doctors from shield states to patients all over the country.
Paxton’s lawsuit was filed in Collin County in North Texas. According to the lawsuit, a 20-year-old woman there received abortion pills through the telemedicine organization unbeknownst to the biological father of the fetus.
The case has a similar nature to a civil lawsuit for wrongful death filed on behalf of a man who was suing three friends of his ex-wife who he alleged help her obtain abortion pills. In both instances the spouse or partner of a woman was the person who instigated an investigation. The civil lawsuit, which was filed by anti-abortion attorney Jonathan Mitchell, was dropped last year.
Since Senate Bill 8 went into effect in September 2021, Texas has been under a near-total abortion ban. Still, for many lawmakers in the state that isn’t enough. Paxton’s lawsuit has the potential to dramatically curtail abortion through telemedicine, which many patients in banned states have come to rely on.
Paxton’s latest legal efforts also arrived just weeks before a new Trump administration. Many Republicans are hoping that potential Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will work to reverse FDA approval of mifepristone, one of the two drugs administered for a medication abortion. That was also a major component in the Project 2025’s chapter on Health and Human Services.
