New York doctor hit with hefty fine over abortion pill — report
HOUSTON, United States (AFP) — A New York doctor was fined US$100,000 on Thursday by a Texas judge for remotely prescribing abortion pills to a patient in the Southern state where abortion is all but illegal, the New York Times reported.
Maggie Carpenter was accused in December of violating Texas state laws by prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine to a 20-year-old woman near Dallas.
Carpenter, founder of the Coalition for Telemedicine Abortion, was ordered to “cease prescribing abortion-inducing medications to Texas residents” or risk further financial penalties or even imprisonment, according to the New York Times.
The move risks creating a judicial standoff with the state of New York which has brought in laws to shield doctors in such cases.
Texas’ Republican attorney general, Ken Paxton said the 20-year-old woman who received the pills ended up in a hospital with complications and pointed out that Carpenter was not licensed to practice in Texas.
He added that the pills had “ended the life of an unborn child and caused severe complications for the mother, who had to undergo medical intervention,” the report said.
But his counterpart in New York, Letitia James, responded by saying that “in the face of other states’ attacks on those who provide or obtain abortions, New York is proud to be a sanctuary.”
She went on to assure practitioners that the state would defend them “against unjust attempts to punish them for doing their job”.
Texas has some of the strictest laws restricting abortion following the 2022 overturn of the longstanding Roe v Wade ruling by the United States (US) Supreme Court, which turned the issue over to the states.
In January, Carpenter was indicted for “criminal abortion” by the state of Louisiana after being accused of supplying abortion drugs to a minor there.
Many conservative states have banned or severely restricted abortion since the repeal of Roe v Wade.
Now, nearly one in three US women between the ages of 18 and 44 lives in one of those states, according to the Politifact website.
But 18 states, including New York, have passed laws protecting doctors from prosecution elsewhere in the country.
