A law set to take effect on December 4, 2025 would allow people in Texas to sue anyone involved in sending abortion drugs into the state. The Texas law is the latest attack on legal protections put in place by other states to protect reproductive health care providers and patients. (Photo by Tamir Kalifa/Getty Images)
A law set to take effect in early December gives Texans the power to sue anyone involved in shipping abortion pills to the state, from pharmaceutical companies to doctors. It remains to be seen whether the Texas law can break other states’ shield laws.
Texas has several strict abortion bans, but Republican lawmakers also wanted to crack down on the availability of abortion drugs in the state this year. Called “Women and Children Protection Act“The law authorizes plaintiffs in Texas to seek at least $100,000 in damages if someone they are related to or impregnated with received abortion pills in the mail from outside the state.
Other people who are not relatives can also sue and will receive $10,000 if their lawsuit prevails in court. They would have to donate the rest of the money to charity.
Anyone who orders or uses abortion pills to end the pregnancy cannot be prosecuted. The legislation also provided exceptions for hospitals and doctors who perform medically necessary abortions.
Instead, the measure targets out-of-state abortion providers, abortion funds that aid people pay for abortions and manufacturers of mifepristone, a key abortion drug.
“It is the first bill in the country that explicitly focuses on protection laws and protection providers,” said Rachel Rebouché, a reproductive rights expert and law professor at the University of Texas. “The effect is to attempt to create a legislative hook to penalize the provision of protections for medication abortion.”
Rebouché said the law has similarities to Texas’s. six-week abortion banwhich went into effect in September 2021, before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade repealed and gave private individuals the opportunity to sue. She said the latest bounty law could make Texans reluctant to order abortion pills and providers wary of prescribing them, even if they operate under legal protections in their state.
The upcoming Texas law adds to several strategies that anti-abortion Republicans have used to attack shield laws.
“They all come down to sending abortion drugs and trying to stop them,” Rebouché said. “Shield laws have been a really important way for people to get pills in banned states, and that’s why shield laws will continue to be at the center of this discussion.”
Efforts to prosecute shielded providers
When the law takes effect on Dec. 4, it could also trigger the first federal test of shield laws.
Former Texas Attorney General Jonathan Mitchell is representing a Galveston man who has filed a lawsuit Federal lawsuit filed in July against a California doctor accused of sending abortion pills to his partner in Texas. The lawsuit alleges the provider violated state abortion bans and a wrongful death law.
According to a motion filed in September, Mitchell, who is also the originator of Texas’ six-week abortion ban, plans to amend the lawsuit to add a violation of the new law. Mitchell did not respond to requests for comment.
Jenna Hudson, an attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights who is representing the doctor, said abortion opponents are now attacking drugs because they are unthreatening, effective and widely usedeven in places with restrictions.
“People who need care but cannot access it due to financial constraints, inability to travel or other reasons – often simply because of where they live – have access to this necessary care,” Hudson said.
Abortion medications provided via telemedicine accounted for 25% of all abortions in the U.S. last year, according to the Society of Family Planning’s #WeCount June report. Shield laws in eight states Allow providers to prescribe abortion medications remotely to patients who live in states where it is banned.
However, the shields have played a role in maintaining access to abortion across the country Thirteen states ban almost all abortionsand four states have six-week lockdowns. Attempts by prosecutors in Texas and Louisiana to sue a provider in New York – which has a shield law – have so far been unsuccessful.
At the end of October, a New York judge a lawsuit dismissed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton against an Ulster County official who refused to enter judgment against Dr. Margaret Carpenter, citing New York’s shield law.
The decision came a month after New York Attorney General Letitia James intervened in the case. “Texas has no authority in New York and no power to enforce its cruel abortion ban here. Our sanctuary law exists to protect New Yorkers from extremists outside the state, and New York will always remain strong as a safe haven for health care and freedom of choice,” James said in a statement opinion.
Democratic new Gov. Kathy Hochul took the same stance when she rejected an extradition request by Louisiana officials for Carpenter in February.
Paxton also had Dr. A look at Rémy Coeytaux, the Californian provider who was sued in federal court by a man from Texas. In August he sent the doctor a warning.
Hudson, Coeytaux’s attorney, said providers in states with shield laws are committed to providing abortion care to needy patients despite legal threats. “There is a history of violence against abortion providers in America, and Paxton is putting doctors at risk with these public witch hunts,” Hudson said.
Reinforced protection
California, Maine, Massachusetts, New York, Washington and Vermont have passed laws allowing doctors to remove their names from prescriptions for abortion drugs. Advocates hope this trend continues.
Reproductive Futures, a rights group that advocates for expanding protection laws, was founded in October.
“We wanted to provide reassurance to physicians who did not want their names made public,” said Julie Kay, the organization’s founder and CEO.
Kay said patients’ names should also remain confidential: “I think that’s something we owe to women seeking medication.”
The organization is also lobbying lawmakers in 10 states for laws that protect providers and patients from outside examinations and urging them to pass laws that explicitly allow providers to offer telehealth abortions to patients living in states with abortion bans.
Conservatives have come into conflict with shield laws They say they violate the legal tradition of states cooperating in criminal investigations.
“In general, my big problem with them is that they are designed to undermine the ability of pro-life states to enforce their own laws,” said Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
His organization released Project 2025, a conservative policy agenda that called for stronger federal enforcement of abortion restrictions. Jipping said emergency rooms and doctors at the patient’s home “bear the brunt when complications arise” from a telemedicine abortion.
A study published in JAMA Last year, the study compared telemedicine medication abortions and in-clinic medication abortions and found that stern adverse events were low and consistent whether the pills were mailed or provided at in-person appointments.
Researchers at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco studied medication abortions performed by mail and in person with ultrasound at clinics in six states. According to the study, the abortions using medication sent through the mail were 94.4% effective, and the abortions using personal medication were 93.3% effective. Serious adverse events – hospitalization, blood transfusion and emergency surgery – were reported by 1.1% of participants.
According to the results, three patients with complications were in the medication abortion group by mail and three patients with problems were in the in-person abortion group.
The US Food and Drug Administration maintains one review on the safety of mifepristone, even though more than 100 scientific studies have concluded that the drug is unthreatening unthreatening and effective.
The Heritage Foundation supports reinstating previous restrictions on mifepristone, Jipping said.
Jipping published a report in December 2024, suggesting that shield laws could conflict with the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
“The Constitution requires each state to respect the judicial decision of other states, and abortion protection laws are effectively designed not to do so,” Jipping said.
But he is skeptical of the lawsuit Mitchell filed this summer. He said the plaintiff may not have standing to sue the doctor because he is a third party.
Kay, the reproductive rights attorney, said shield laws have worked well in court so far.
“We see that the shield laws meet their needs,” Kay said. “They are well designed and we have governors, attorneys general and others who are really behind them. What the federal government is doing is literally unclear right now.”
Kay noticed this Abortion referendums have prevailed in Republican-led states like Missouri. “I would hope that the Trump administration would listen to this,” she said.
Scope Legal Protection for Abortion Drug Providers and Patients across the country.
Read more about the FDA’s high-risk safety review of the abortion pill.
This story was originally produced by News from the Stateswhich is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network that includes West Virginia Watch, and is a 501c(3) public charity supported by grants and a coalition of donors.
