The Freedom From Religion Foundation denounces Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against a New York physician for providing abortion medication to a Texas resident.
Paxton, who was the subject of an impeachment for misusing the powers of his office, is a Christian nationalist who has repeatedly intervened in some of FFRF’s litigation, including our case against a praying judge and a controversy over bible posters by cheerleaders. He reprehensibly told parents of children slaughtered in the Uvalde school shooting that “God has a plan.”
Paxton claims that the New York physician he is targeting, Dr. Maggie Carpenter, is “unlawfully providing abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents in direct violation of state law” and is asking for civil penalties of “no less than $100,000 for each violation of the law.” Paxton is seeking to enjoin Carpenter from practicing telemedicine in Texas.
Fortunately, Carpenter, founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT), lives in one of the eight states to enact a shield law protecting health providers and others from lawsuits or prosecutions over reproductive rights lodged by individuals outside the state. New York Attorney General Letitia James has promised, “We will always protect our providers from unjust attempts to punish them for doing their job and we will never cower in the face of intimidation or threats.” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has also vowed to maintain “New York’s status as a safe harbor for all who seek abortion care.”
The situation involves a 20-year-old woman who sought medical attention for bleeding after taking the pills. Her boyfriend, incensed at learning after the fact that his girlfriend had ended an unwanted pregnancy, found evidence of the medications, then took it to an anti-abortion individual or group who turned it into Paxton.
The reversal of Roe vs. Wade has created not only chaos — with some 20 states banning or severely restricting abortion rights — but legal combat between the states. University of California–Davis Law Professor Mary Ziegler, who received FFRF’s 2023 Forward Award, predicts that this lawsuit could wind up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. As Ziegler told the New York Times, the interstate battles are “kind of giving the lie to the whole idea that each state is going to be left to do its own thing.”
The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine website states that it “directly supports clinicians who make safe, timely and affordable telemedicine abortion care available to patients in all 50 states.” Texas Right to Life spokesperson Kimberlyn Schwartz claims that “if Texas wins, this case could open the door for the state to take further legal action against one of the largest organizations in the illegal abortion cartel: Aid Access,” a European group.
Paxton is also suing to block federal rules prohibiting investigators from viewing the medical records of women who travel out of state for abortion care.
“The goal of these religiously motivated anti-abortionists is to abolish abortion nationwide,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “They are fanatics who will not be satisfied until they reduce women’s legal status to that of incubators.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 40,000 members and several chapters across the country. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash
