A Texas judge ordered a New York doctor to stop prescribing abortion pills to patients in Texas and to pay a penalty for doing so.
The physician was fined $100,000, plus attorneys’ fees, for allegedly providing the medication to a woman across state lines. The civil lawsuit was filed in December by the state’s attorney general. Violating the injunction barring the doctor from prescribing abortion pills to Texas residents in the future could carry additional penalties or a jail sentence.
The physician, Margaret Carpenter, M.D., runs a practice in upstate New York and co-founded the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, an advocacy group aiming to advance telemedicine abortion in all 50 states.
In a separate criminal case in Louisiana, Carpenter was charged with providing abortion pills across state lines to a minor last month. That case appears to be the first time criminal charges were filed against an abortion care provider for sending pills to a state with an abortion ban.
New York officials have said they will not cooperate with out-of-state prosecutions. The Texas ruling, in a civil case, came the same day New York Gov. Kathy Hochul rejected a request from Louisiana to extradite Carpenter. The physician did not appear in court for a hearing before the Texas judge, The New York Times reported. Texas is considered likely to file a petition in a state court in New York to try to collect the financial penalty.
The Texas case is reportedly expected to reach the Supreme Court, throwing telemedicine abortion shield laws in blue states into a high-profile spotlight. These laws, which exist in eight states, were established after the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and are intended to protect abortion providers who send medications to patients in other states.
Medication abortions account for two-thirds of abortions in the U.S. In mid-2024, medication sent by shield law providers accounted for 10% of abortions nationally.
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