New York Still Won’t Hold Abortionist Accountable for Illegally Selling Abortion Pills in Texas

Nobody said it was going to be easy. On Monday, for the second time, Acting Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck said he would not grant Texas’ motion that sought to enforce the order of State District Judge Bryan Gantt of Collin County District Court in Texas to New York abortionist Margaret Carpenter to pay a penalty of over $100,000 and to stop sending abortion pills into Texas. In March, Bruck refused an initial request to file the judgment.

“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.

Bruck is relying on New York’s ‘telemedicine abortion shield laws’ which “prevent officials from extraditing abortion providers to other states or from responding to subpoenas and other legal actions — a stark departure from typical interstate practices of cooperating in such cases,” according to Pam Belluck of the New York Times . “The action by the New York county clerk is the first time that an abortion shield law has been used.”

Pro-abortion New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, “responding to the latest request from [Texas Attorney General Ken] Paxton’s office, claimed he was attempting to dictate ‘the personal decisions of women across America,’” Michael Hill reported for the Associated Press . “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.’”

Background

In 2024 Paxton sued Carpenter, “who mailed abortion pills –mifepristone–to a Texas woman who suffered complications, including bleeding severe enough to warrant emergency care,” Nancy Flanders reported.

In February Judge Gantt noted that, despite being notified, Carpenter failed to appear in court.

Gantt ruled that Carpenter “had violated Texas law by practicing without a license and facilitating an abortion, and ‘that an unborn child died as a result of the violations.’” Gantt “issued a permanent injunction against Carpenter prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents,” Pat Belluck and Mary Beth Gahan reported for the New York Times .

But Texas is not the only strongly pro-life state testing the 2023 shield law.

Earlier this year, grand jurors in West Baton Rouge Parish, indicted Carpenter for prescribing an abortion pill online to a minor teenage girl in Port Allen, Louisiana.

Carpenter is co-director of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT). She is licensed to practice medicine in New York but not in Louisiana or Texas.

District Attorney Tony Clayton said a warrant was issued for the arrest of Carpenter. “The daughter wanted the pregnancy and had a reveal party planned,” the district attorney said, according to The Advocate.

“The young child was told by the mother that she had to take the pill or else. The child took the pill was home alone… felt something happening to her body and began hemorrhaging, and the baby began to come out,” Chris Nakamoto reported.

“It’s the law of Louisiana. Gov. Landry, AG Liz Murrill, and our legislature has seen fit that abortions are illegal in this state,” Clayton said. “Shipping an abortion pill from another state is equivalent to me of shipping fentanyl or any other type of drug over here that ends up in the mouths and stomachs of our minor kids.”

Gov. Hochul again invoked the state’s shield law in rejecting a request to extradite Carpenter to Louisiana.

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. He frequently writes Today’s News and Views — an online opinion column on pro-life issues.

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