Letitia James vows to defend NY doctor targeted by Texas over abortion pills

New York attorney general Letitia James will intervene in Texas’s bid to penalise a New York doctor accused of mailing abortion pills across state lines.

The Democratic attorney general announced her intervention on Monday, escalating one of the most consequential fights in the US abortion wars since Roe v Wade was overturned three years ago.

The case centres on Dr Margaret Carpenter, who Texas Republican attorney general Ken Paxton sued last year for allegedly breaching Texas’s near-total abortion ban. Paxton accused Carpenter of sending abortion pills – medicines that can end early pregnancies – to a woman in Texas.

After Carpenter failed to turn up for a court appearance, a Texas judge ordered her to pay more than US$100,000 in fines.

An acting New York clerk in Ulster county, Taylor Bruck, refused to enforce the fine. New York has a “shield law” that forbids state officials from extraditing abortion providers to other states or complying with out-of-state court orders such as the one issued in Texas. Paxton then sued Bruck.

On Monday, James told an Ulster county supreme court judge she would step in to defend Bruck.

She is set to file briefs later this month arguing Texas cannot use New York courts to enforce its abortion laws.

James said in a statement: “I am stepping in to defend the integrity of our laws and our courts against this blatant overreach.

“Texas has no authority in New York, and no power to impose its cruel abortion ban here.”

Paxton’s office did not respond to The Guardian‘s requests for comment.

Legal experts say the case raises constitutional questions over states’ obligations to respect each other’s laws and could reach the US supreme court.

The outcome of the landmark case between Texas and New York will reverberate across the country, as abortion pills and shield laws have become increasingly vital to US abortion provision in the three years since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade.

By the end of 2024, providers who live in states with shield laws were mailing more than 10,000 abortion pills a month to people in states that ban virtually all abortions or prohibit abortion via telemedicine, according to data from the research project #WeCount.

Angered by this development, anti-abortion activists have launched numerous legal and legislative broadsides against abortion pills.

Jonathan Mitchell, a prominent anti-abortion lawyer in Texas, has represented multiple plaintiffs suing abortion providers for allegedly facilitating abortions.

Last week, the Texas state legislature passed a law that lets people sue abortion pill providers suspected of mailing the pills to Texas.

The following day, Robert F Kennedy Jr, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, suggested the US government would curb access to a key abortion pill.

Many of these efforts raise fundamental questions about the relationship between US states and their obligations to respect each other’s laws.

The closest parallel to the fight over shield laws, experts have noted, are the pre-civil war battles between states over how to treat enslaved people who had escaped slaveholding states and fled into states that banned the practice.