New York Attorney General Letitia James escalated her state’s attempts to shield abortion drug traffickers from punishment for breaking pro-life state laws this week when she joined the legal fight over Texas’ mifepristone ban.
James announced on Monday intent to file a court document challenging Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s efforts to sue and fine prescribers who illegally mail abortion pills to women in the Lone Star State. The filing specifically targets Paxton’s suit against the New York county clerk who blocked Texas from fining an abortion pill prescriber under fire for violating state law.
James claims “Texas has no authority in New York, and no power to impose its cruel abortion ban here.” Paxton, on the other hand, insists that New York has a “constitutional obligation under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution” to “recognize the judicial enactments of other states’ courts.”
“Letitia James is a lawless abortionist who is obsessed with killing babies and weaponizing her office for her political career. I will defeat her in court,” Paxton said on X, shortly after news of James’ filing broke.
The fight centers on a petition, filed by Paxton in December, alleging that Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine Founder and Co-Medical Director Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter violated Texas law when she provided abortion drugs to a 20-year-old pregnant Dallas-Fort Worth woman by mail after a virtual appointment in May 2024.
By the end of January, a Louisiana grand jury indicted Carpenter for similarly prescribing abortion drugs to a pregnant minor. Days later, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul rushed to sign a “shield law” that New York Democrats claim protects prescribers of the dangerous abortion drug regimen from penalty in pro-life states.
A Texas judge eventually ordered Carter to pay $113,000 and cease sending abortion pills to Lone Star State women. Efforts to enforce that fine and even have Carpenter extradited to Louisiana, however, were hamstrung by Hochul and a New York county clerk touting the blue state’s shield law.
As the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs (AAPLOG) noted earlier this year, “concealing doctors’ identity recklessly endangers the patients we’re meant to serve.”
“It compounds the risks of telehealth prescription of mifepristone without in-person consultations, and the barriers it creates to identifying prescribing physicians could mean the difference between life and death for patients,” AAPLOG wrote in a letter to Hochul after she signed the legislation.
That warning, however, and studies showing the abortion pill regimen’s rate of complications is much higher than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration claims were apparently ignored by James.
Despite the Democrats’ persistence on abortion pills, pro-life states aren’t backing down. In July, 16 red state attorneys general penned a letter to congressional leadership urging the federal legislature to “consider stepping in” on the showdown.
“Instead of allowing pro-abortion States to disrespect the decisions of other States regarding abortion and trample the Constitution, Congress should assess whether it should tackle this issue head on with legislation that preempts state shield laws,” the letter stated.
New York Democrats have already poured millions of dollars into stockpiling abortion pills, shoring up legal loopholes for abortionists. James has even sued pregnancy centers for offering abortion pill reversals to women who regret downing mifepristone.
The latest attempt from James to double down on New York’s radical abortion agenda comes in the face of a legal battle of her own. In April, the Federal Housing Finance Agency referred James for federal criminal prosecution over alleged mortgage fraud that led to a related bar complaint.
Her official involvement in the mifepristone shield law fight also came mere days after the Texas legislature passed a bill permitting private citizens to sue abortion drug manufacturers, distributors, and prescribers who do business in the Lone Star State.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.