The showdown catapults the interstate abortion wars to a new level.
A New York state court on Thursday blocked Texas from filing a legal action against a New York doctor for prescribing and sending abortion pills to a Texas woman.
The unprecedented move catapults the interstate abortion wars to a new level, setting the stage for a high-stakes legal battle between states that ban abortion and states that support abortion rights.
The dispute is widely expected to reach the Supreme Court, pitting Texas, which has a near-total abortion ban, against New York, which has a shield law that is intended to protect abortion providers who send medications to patients in other states.
New York is one of eight states that have enacted “telemedicine abortion shield laws” after the Supreme Court overturned the national right to an abortion in 2022. The laws prevent officials from extraditing abortion providers to other states or from responding to subpoenas and other legal actions — a stark departure from typical interstate practices of cooperating in such cases.
The action by the New York court is the first time that an abortion shield law has been used.
This case involves Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of New Paltz, N.Y., who works with telemedicine abortion organizations to provide abortion pills to patients across the country. In December, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, sued Dr. Carpenter, who is not licensed in Texas, accusing her of sending abortion pills to a Texas woman, in violation of the state’s ban.
Dr. Carpenter and her lawyers did not respond to the lawsuit and did not show up for a court hearing last month in Texas. Judge Bryan Gantt of Collin County District Court issued a default judgment, ordering Dr. Carpenter to pay a penalty of $113,000 and to stop sending abortion medication to Texas.