Or in this case where the courts have never gone before… and it is scary!
CBS News
December 13, 2024
Texas has sued a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, launching one of the first challenges in the U.S. to shield laws that Democrat-controlled states passed to protect physicians after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed the lawsuit on Thursday in Collin County, and it was announced Friday.
Such prescriptions, made online and over the phone, are a key reason that the number of abortions has increased across the U.S. even since state bans started taking effect. Most abortions in the U.S. involve pills rather than procedures.
Mary Ruth Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, said a challenge to shield laws, which blue states started adopting in 2023, has been anticipated.
And it could have a chilling effect on prescriptions.
"Will doctors be more afraid to mail pills into Texas, even if they might be protected by shield laws because they don't know if they're protected by shield laws?" she said in an interview Friday.
Fear, that is what Texas is dealing out… they want to make doctors afraid of treating patients.
New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement that the state will "protect our providers from unjust attempts to punish them for doing their job."
"Abortion is, and will continue to be, legal and protected in New York. As other states move to attack those who provide or obtain abortion care, New York is proud to be a safe haven for abortion access," she said in the statement.
This can have far reaching implication… is a doctor sitting in an office and talking to patient in another state considered a business transaction in the doctor’s state or is it where the patient lives? That is the question. Now other states are think about it…
"I began to think about how we might be able to both provide an additional deterrent to companies violating the criminal law and provide a remedy for the family of the unborn children," said Tennessee state Rep. Gino Bulso, who is sponsoring the legislation there that includes a provision barring use of the medications for abortion.
A fragile truce between the states on abortion just collapsed: Last week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against a doctor in New York for mailing pills into the state. The physician, Margaret Daly Carpenter, is part of a group called the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, which represents doctors who mail abortion medications — in this case, mifepristone and misoprostol — to states where the procedure is banned. ACT refers to these clients as “shield providers” because they rely on the protections afforded by so-called shield laws, which are on the books in 23 states and the District of Columbia to protect providers and other possible defendants from out-of-state legal consequences. Texas’ suit is the first to challenge these shield laws, and it’s likely to raise unprecedented legal questions in the new year.
I think this is different from the trans case in Washington state where Texas sued for a hospital records on patients from Texas because this involves medicines. MSNBC writes,
With this lawsuit, we enter uncharted territory. Texas has accused Carpenter of practicing medicine without a license and violating a state law limiting the availability of abortion pills, with civil penalties for the latter starting at $100,000. If Texas’ lawsuit goes forward, it seems likely, Texas will win in its own state courts. A Texas court will have to decide which state’s law applies, given that the physician was based in one state and the patient and the abortion in another. Standard telehealth law tends to focus on the location of the patient. And Texas will argue that it has the right to apply its laws because of where the abortion — the injury in Texas’ view — took place. That means Texas could win a civil judgment against Carpenter even if she never travels to the state.
I can see the difference between physically driving to a state verses a Zoom meeting.
This opens up a whole Pandora's Box for telemedicine!
The state of Texas has sued a New Paltz, New York doctor for prescribing a medicated abortion to a Texas resident online, setting up the first test of a New York law meant to protect abortion providers.
WAMC Northeast Public Radio
By Jesse King
December 17, 2024
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a federal, civil lawsuit against Dr. Maggie Carpenter for practicing in Texas without a license and prescribing two abortion medications — mifepristone and misoprostal — to a Texas woman via telemedicine. Texas banned nearly all abortions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
According to the filing, it was the father in the pregnancy who discovered the abortion, after the woman experienced complications that resulted in her going to the hospital.
The lawsuit is one of the first trying to prevent telemedicine providers from mailing abortion pills to states that ban it. It’s also the first test of New York’s “shield law” — one of several shield laws in states across the country — designed to protect providers and abortion advocates from retaliation.
“It’s definitely something we’ve expected to see, this kind of inter-state conflict around abortion," says Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. "This is a question about states’ rights, right? And when states have to listen to one another.”
This case is going to the Supreme Court! No ifs, ands, or buts! And it is a biggie!
Suppose a doctor at a famous teaching hospital is consulting with a doctor in another state on a patient in that state… what would the legal ramifications?
Suppose a doctor in Californian is treating a patient way out in the boonies in a town in Alaska without a doctor?
“It’s going to be one of many lawsuits we see, and potentially prosecutions like this, in the New Year — in addition to lobbying of the Trump Administration to take steps at the federal level," she explains. "For example, to disallow telehealth access to abortion medication, or to use the Comstock Act, which is a 19th Century obscenity law, to essentially block the mailing of not just abortion pills, but any abortion-related paraphenalia.”
Suppose a doctor tells a trans patient this is dosage and the drug you need to block puberty and the patient buys the drug from New Zealand… what is the doctor’s liability since he didn’t write a prescription for the drug?
Dr. Carpenter was not a licensed Texas physician and was not authorized to practice telehealth in the state, the release said. It is illegal to treat patients or prescribe medicine through telehealth services without a valid Texas medical license. And Texas law prohibits any physicians from providing abortion-induced drugs by courier, delivery and mail service.
The lawsuit requested the courts impose civil penalties of $100,000 for each violation of the law.
Dr. Carpenter is the fourth physician that the Texas attorney general has sued since October. The first three, all Texas physicians, were sued for allegedly providing gender-related transition care to minors. In November, Mr. Paxton sued Brett Cooper, MD, claiming the physician illegally prescribed hormone therapy drugs to 15 minors, most recently as of Sept. 25. On Oct. 17, his office filed a similar lawsuit against May Lau, MD, a Dallas-based UT Southwestern Medical Center physician; and on Oct. 31, Mr. Paxton sued Hector Granados, MD, over allegedly providing gender-affirming care to 21 patients between the ages of 12 and 17.
If Texas prevails with this case, it could set a horrible precedent for stricter regulation of interstate telemedicine services, potentially affecting access to transgender healthcare via telemedicine.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when we twist the Constitution to our religious beliefs!
