Albany, N.Y. (AP) — A ruling by a Texas judge on Thursday has ordered Dr. Maggie Carpenter, a New York-based doctor, to pay over $100,000 in penalties for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas. This decision could challenge the effectiveness of “shield laws” in Democratic-controlled states where abortion remains legal.
On the same day as the Texas ruling, New York Governor Kathy Hochul dismissed a request from Louisiana to extradite Dr. Carpenter. The doctor is facing charges in Louisiana for prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor. Unlike Louisiana, Texas has not filed criminal charges against Carpenter but accused her of violating state law by prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine, amid one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans.
State District Judge Bryan Gantt imposed the fine on Carpenter along with attorney's fees and issued an injunction preventing her from prescribing abortion medication to Texas residents. Despite being notified, Carpenter did not appear in court, according to Gantt.
Governor Hochul, a Democrat, emphasized her refusal to honor Louisiana’s extradition request. “I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana,” she stated during a news conference in Manhattan. “Not now, not ever.” She also directed law enforcement in New York to disregard out-of-state warrants for such charges.
Carpenter, the co-medical director and founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, has been supported by the group’s executive director, Julie Kay, who stated that the Texas ruling does not alter shield laws. She affirmed that “patients can access medication abortion from licensed providers no matter where they live.” The group also criticized Louisiana’s efforts to extradite Carpenter.
The case in Louisiana marks the first instance of criminal charges against a doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to another state. Pills have become the most common method of abortion in the U.S., central to the political and legal battles over abortion access following the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Both the Texas and Louisiana cases are pivotal in testing New York’s “shield law,” which offers legal protections to doctors prescribing abortion medication to states where abortions are banned or heavily restricted. Other Democratic-controlled states have adopted similar shield laws.
Prosecutors in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, have indicted Carpenter for violating the state’s near-total abortion ban. This law allows for sentences of up to 15 years in prison for physicians convicted of performing abortions, including those using pills. Louisiana authorities reported that the girl who received the pills had a medical emergency and was hospitalized. The girl’s mother has also been charged and turned herself in to police.
In a videotaped statement, Republican Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry insisted that “there is only one right answer in this situation, and it is that that doctor must face extradition to Louisiana where she can stand trial and justice will be served.” Landry’s office did not respond to a request for comment following Hochul's refusal of the extradition request.
In the Texas case, the state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton noted that the 20-year-old woman who received the pills was hospitalized with complications. The filing stated that only after this incident did the man described as “the biological father of the unborn child” learn of the pregnancy and the abortion.
