Texas sues to enforce its draconian abortion ban against a New York doctor

With the election over, Republicans are able to act in accordance with their beliefs about abortion again:

Well, we figured this was coming. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing a New York abortion provider for “unlawfully providing abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents in direct violation of state law.”

As you know, telehealth abortion medication has been a saving grace for patients in states with bans, who are getting pills from doctors in shield states like New York. Conservatives are furious that women have been able to get around their bans, and AGs like Paxton are eager to go after the providers and abortion funds who help them. Like I’ve long said, they’re targeting the helpers.

In this case, Paxton is suing Dr. Margaret (Maggie) Carpenter, founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT) and a provider with Aid Access. He’s seeking civil penalties of “no less than $100,000 for each violation of the law.”

Paxton claims that Carpenter provided abortion medication to a Texas resident “that ended the life of an unborn child and resulted in serious complications for the mother, who then required medical intervention.”

Paxton’s brother in misogynist rage turns out to be the woman’s boyfriend:

We’ll come back to the claim of “serious complications” momentarily, but first let’s take a look at the legal brief and see what happened. The suit says that a 20 year-old woman got abortion medication from New York and later asked her boyfriend—who didn’t know about the pregnancy—to take her to the hospital for bleeding. (Please note that throughout the brief Paxton refers to this young woman as “the mother,” rather than as a patient, woman, or anything else. Gross.)

….In other words: when confronted with information about his girlfriend losing a pregnancy, this man was pissed that she hadn’t told him and immediately suspected that she had an abortion. Then he goes back to snoop at her house and finds the medication. Presumably, he then went to some shitty anti-abortion group or lawyer who took the case to Paxton. Remember, I’ve been warning that Texas Right to Life and folks like Jonathan Mitchell have been scouring the state for a man aggrieved over a girlfriend or ex-wife’s abortion.

As is often the case, these are the absolute worst kind of men: controllers and abusers who want to punish women for doing something they didn’t like. There may be no worse kind of abuser than Paxton himself, who claims in his statement to “treasure the health and lives of mothers and babies,” yet has threatened hospitals out of providing care to women with nonviable pregnancies.

The Republican strategy during national elections is going to be to try to keep the Paxtons and Mitchells locked in a back office somewhere and then let their freak flags filly fly after it’s over. The question is whether the press is going to keep falling for fake Republican moderation in the face of all evidence, and I wish I could tell you there was a breaking point (although the realigned electoral coalitions will help Democrats in midterm and special elections.)