Tuesday, July 15, 2025

As Case To Follow! (Part 1)

This case is going all the way to the Supreme Court and will be a landmark case!

A New York doctor prescribed an abortion pill to a Texas woman and all hell broke loose in Texas!
By  MICHAEL HILL
July 14, 2025


A county clerk in New York on Monday again refused to file a more than $100,000 civil judgment from Texas against a doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to a Dallas-area woman.

New York is among eight states with shield laws that protect providers from other states’ reach. Abortion opponents claim the laws violate a constitutional requirement that states respect the laws and legal judgments of other states.

Republican Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton wants a New York court to enforce a civil decision from Texas against Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who practices north of New York City in Ulster County, for allegedly prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine.
See that last word... that is what all this hullabaloo is all about! The question is boiled down to, can a doctor prescribe meds that are legal in one the state where the doctor lives and the not where the patient lives.
“While I’m not entirely sure how things work in Texas, here in New York, a rejection means the matter is closed,” Bruck wrote in a letter to Texas officials.
This has ramifications way, way beyond abortion and trans health it questions the very fabric of telemedicine! It will define the way in which in the future how healthcare is done. Today I am going to devote to discussing telemedical. I am not a lawyer so this will be what a lay person views of the can of worms this case opens, the questions that I am asking will be settled out in our court system for better or worst.

First just the fact that this case is a battle between using the law for morality. This case is about: jurisdictional overreach.

It used to be doctors are only licensed to practice in the states where they hold medical licenses but now with the internet they can see a patient it other states and even in other countries. So far the ;aw hasn't caught up with the technology.

What is telemedicine and how is it used. We probably all have heard of telemedicine or telehealth but now with the computer age it has expanded. It used to be the doctor picked up a phone and called and sent the medical records to another doctor in another state. Then they talked on the phone about the patient. But now with zoom like meetings and the internet in real time.

But now a doctor who followed their own state’s laws and still being held liable in the patient's state!
The Texas case is one of two involving Carpenter that could end up testing shield laws.

Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul this year invoked the state’s shield law in rejecting a request to extradite Carpenter to Louisiana, where the doctor was charged with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor.

Hochul, responding to the latest request from Paxton’s office, claimed he was attempting to dictate “the personal decisions of women across America.”

“Our response to their baseless claim is clear: no way in hell. New York won’t be bullied,” she said in a prepared statement. “And I’ll never back down from this fight.”
At its core, this legal battle is rooted in religious and moral conflict. One state is trying to impose its values and restrictions on others. And depending on how the courts rule, this could expose medical providers to unpredictable liability in all 50 states, each with vastly different laws.

Once again, the laws simply have not caught up with the technology. If this case proceeds to the Supreme Court, we can expect a ripple effect—an endless stream of court cases, new legislation, and national debate about where state boundaries end in a digitally connected world.

The results of these cases doctors may become reluctant to treat patients in other states via telemedicine, especially for legally sensitive care like, abortion pills and gender-affirming treatments.

Tomorrow I did deeper into how this case could effect medical care for the nation, not only for abortions and trans health!


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