MCHS– A lawsuit has been filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a woman.
The lawsuit was filed on Thursday in Collin County, where Paxton accused Margaret Daley Carpenter, a doctor from New York, of supplying mifepristone and misoprostol to a 20-year-old pregnant woman, resulting in a medical abortion.
The lawsuit stated that Carpenter’s actions breach the Texas Health and Safety Code, which forbids the prescription of abortion-inducing medications through telemedicine.
A legal action was filed seeking a court order to prevent Daley from supplying abortion pills to expectant patients in Texas, along with a demand for civil penalties totaling $100,000 for every breach of state regulations.
“In Texas, we value the well-being of mothers and infants, which is why out-of-state physicians are prohibited from unlawfully prescribing abortion-inducing medications to residents of Texas,” Paxton stated in a statement on Friday.
Carpenter has yet to reply to a request for comment made on Friday evening.
A lawsuit reveals that in July, a pregnant woman requested the biological father of her unborn child to take her to the hospital due to hemorrhage or severe bleeding. He later discovered, after she was examined by medical staff at a Collin County hospital, that she was nine weeks pregnant.
He believed that the biological mother may have played a role in the miscarriage or abortion of the unborn child and later found out about the medications from Carpenter, as stated in the lawsuit.
Paxton’s filing stated that Carpenter lacks a license to practice medicine in Texas and contended that by conducting telehealth visits in the state, she was breaching a state administrative code that mandates physicians treating and prescribing to patients in Texas must possess full medical licenses from the state.
The lawsuit claims, “If Carpenter is not restrained by this Court with enforceable relief, he will persist in violating Texas Law.” “The likelihood of Carpenter’s ongoing breach of our Texas laws, as outlined here, is high and approaching.”
The co-medical director and founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine is Carpenter, according to the group’s website, which focuses on promoting telemedicine abortion across the country.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul expressed her dedication to keeping the state a welcoming place for those seeking abortion care and safeguarding the reproductive rights of all residents.
In June, the Supreme Court dismissed a challenge to the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, ruling that the doctors who opposed the FDA’s policies allowing broader access to the medication lacked the legal standing to file a lawsuit. In October, Idaho, Missouri, and Kansas intensified their initiatives to limit the drug.
