New York Gov. Kathy Hochul speaks at a press convention within the Queens borough of New York on Nov. 26, 2024.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
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Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
ALBANY, N.Y. — A Texas choose on Thursday ordered a New York physician to pay greater than $100,000 in penalties for prescribing abortion capsules to a girl close to Dallas, a ruling that might check “protect legal guidelines” in Democratic-controlled states the place abortion is authorized.
The ruling was handed down on the identical day New York Gov. Kathy Hochul rejected a request from Louisiana to extradite the identical physician, Dr. Maggie Carpenter, who was charged in that state with prescribing abortion capsules to a pregnant minor.
In contrast to Louisiana, Texas didn’t file felony expenses in opposition to Carpenter however accused her in a December lawsuit of violating state regulation by prescribing abortion remedy through telemedicine. Texas has one of the crucial restrictive abortion bans within the nation.
State District Choose Bryan Gantt issued the wonderful in opposition to Carpenter and ordered her to pay legal professional’s charges. He additionally issued an injunction barring Carpenter from prescribing abortion remedy to Texas residents. Gantt famous in his order that regardless of being notified, Carpenter failed to look in court docket.
Earlier Hochul, a Democrat, stated she wouldn’t honor Louisiana’s request to arrest and ship the physician to Louisiana after she was charged with violating the southern state’s strict anti-abortion regulation.
“I cannot be signing an extradition order that got here from the governor of Louisiana,” Hochul stated at a information convention in Manhattan. “Not now, not ever.”
She additionally stated she despatched out a discover to regulation enforcement in New York that instructed them to not cooperate with out-of-state warrants for such expenses.
Carpenter is co-medical director and founding father of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine. Julie Kay, the group’s government director, stated the Texas ruling doesn’t change protect legal guidelines and that “sufferers can entry remedy abortion from licensed suppliers regardless of the place they dwell.”
The group additionally criticized Louisiana’s efforts to extradite Carpenter.
The case in opposition to Carpenter in Louisiana seems to be the primary occasion of felony expenses in opposition to a health care provider accused of prescribing abortion capsules to a different state.
Drugs have grow to be the most typical technique of abortion within the U.S. and are on the epicenter of political and authorized fights over abortion entry following the U.S. Supreme Courtroom’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Each the Texas and Louisiana circumstances will check New York’s so-called protect regulation, which supplies authorized protections to medical doctors who prescribe abortion remedy to conservative states the place abortions are banned or in any other case restricted. Different Democratic-controlled states have comparable “protect legal guidelines.”
Prosecutors in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, indicted Carpenter on expenses that she violated the state’s near-total abortion ban, which permits physicians convicted of performing abortions, together with one with capsules, to be sentenced as much as 15 years in jail.
Louisiana authorities stated the woman who obtained the capsules skilled a medical emergency and needed to be transported to the hospital. The woman’s mom was additionally charged and has turned herself in to police.
In a videotaped assertion Thursday, Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry stated “there is just one proper reply on this scenario, and it’s that that physician should face extradition to Louisiana the place she will stand trial and justice will probably be served.”
Landry’s workplace didn’t instantly return an emailed request for remark despatched after Hochul refused the extradition request.
Within the Texas case, the state’s Republican Lawyer Normal Ken Paxton has stated that the 20-year-old girl who obtained the capsules ended up in a hospital with problems. It was solely after that, the state stated in its submitting, that the person described as “the organic father of the unborn baby” discovered of the being pregnant and the abortion.
