By Brendan Pierson, Reuters
Medication abortion accounts for more than half of US abortions. Photo: AP Photo / Allen G. Breed
A New York doctor was indicted by a grand jury in West Baton Rouge, Louisiana, for prescribing an abortion pill that was taken by a teenager there.
Margaret Carpenter and her practice, Nightingale Medical, were charged with criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducting drugs, a felony, according to an indictment provided by the West Baton Rouge District Attorney's office. The minor's mother was also charged.
The case appeared to be the first time a state has brought criminal charges against a doctor in another state for prescribing abortion drugs across state lines. It will likely be an early test of the power of states that criminalise abortion to prosecute providers outside their borders, and the ability of states that support abortion rights to shield providers from such prosecutions. Carpenter was also sued civilly by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last month.
"It is illegal to send abortion pills into this state and it's illegal to coerce another into having an abortion," Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement. "We will hold individuals accountable for breaking the law."
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said on Friday that the state would not comply with any request to extradite Carpenter.
New York Attorney General Letitia James in a statement said: "This cowardly attempt out of Louisiana to weaponise the law against out-of-state providers is unjust and un-American."
Medication abortion accounts for more than half of US abortions. It has drawn increasing scrutiny since the US Supreme Court's 2022 decision allowing states to ban abortion, which more than 20, including Louisiana, have done.
Louisiana last year also passed a law specifically targeting mifepristone, classifying it as a controlled substance under state law.
Mifepristone is the first part of a two-drug regimen used for medication abortion, which is approved by the FDA to terminate pregnancy in the first 10 weeks.
Carpenter, who is based in New Paltz, New York, is a co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, which supports nationwide access to abortion through telemedicine.
"The case out of Louisiana against a licensed New York doctor is the latest in a series of threats that jeopardises women's access to reproductive healthcare throughout this country," the Coalition said in a statement.
Test cases
New York is among the eight Democratic-led states that have passed so-called shield laws aiming to protect doctors who provide abortion pills to patients in other states. The law says New York will not cooperate with another state's effort to prosecute, sue or otherwise penalise a doctor for providing the pills, as long as the doctor complies with New York law.
"These are cases designed to test New York's shield law," Rachel Rebouche, a professor at Temple University's Beasley School of Law who focuses on reproductive health law, said of the Louisiana and Texas cases. She said the legal issues surrounding shield laws were "murky," and that similar cases were likely in the future as anti-abortion prosecutors seek to test their limits.
The US Constitution requires states to extradite someone who commits a crime in one state and then flees to another. It also generally requires states to respect the judgements of each other's courts, but there are exceptions, according to Rebouche.
"This might be an issue that ends up in front of the (US) Supreme Court," Rebouche said. "What do New York courts have to do? Do they have to enforce the decisions of another state?"
In the meantime, she said, Carpenter and other doctors who help provide abortion pills face serious risk if they travel to states without shield laws.
Anti-abortion groups praised the indictment.
"Louisiana has the right and the duty to protect its citizens from high-risk abortion drugs," said Erik Baptist, a lawyer at the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom. The group until recently represented anti-abortion activists in a lawsuit seeking to restrict the availability of mifepristone nationwide, which has been taken over by Republican states after the Supreme Court ruled the original plaintiffs lacked legal standing.
Nancy Northrup, president of the pro-abortion rights Center for Reproductive Rights, in a statement said that the case is "designed to frighten other doctors from providing care to women trapped in states where abortion is banned and options are limited."
- Reuters
