In the wake of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, a number of conservative states enacted protections for unborn children. At the same time, pro-abortion advocates began working to circumvent these changes and provide abortion access to women even in violation of state law. And liberal states started to circle the wagons around the practitioners who provided abortions to out-of-state clients, hoping to insulate them from the potential adverse consequences of this strategy. 

This is the contemporary landscape of abortion in America — which is why, on Dec. 12, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against a New York abortionist who provided chemical abortion drugs to a Texas woman in violation of state law. 
As of 2022, Texas regulates abortion closely, permitting abortion only if the life or health of the mother is at risk. Even then, only a licensed physician can perform the abortion, and the patient must have a “life-threatening condition and be at risk of death” or substantial harm. In the procedure, the doctor must try to “save the life of the fetus” unless doing so would increase the risk of maternal death. 
Unable to procure an abortion on demand for anything less than extreme danger, Texas women who want an abortion can either travel out-of-state for the procedure or obtain chemical abortion pills to end their pregnancy at home. 
A number of online abortion pill providers advertise the ease and privacy of these chemical abortion pills. Founded in 2022, the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT) “supports clinicians who make safe, timely, and affordable telemedicine abortion care available to patients in all 50 states.” 
But there’s an obvious catch for doctors prescribing chemical abortion pills for out-of-state patients: laws vary from state to state, not only regarding abortion but also the legitimacy of inter-state telemedicine. Depending on licensing regulations, a doctor licensed in one state may not be able to legal...