Texas’ fascist and corrupt Attorney General, Ken Paxton, filed suit against a New York physician, Margaret Daley Carpenter, for prescribing mifepristone and misoprostol, a pair of abortion-inducing drugs, to a 20-year-old pregnant woman there, which led to a medical abortion.
In a statement released on Friday, Paxton’s office issued the following:
Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, a New York doctor and founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, unlawfully provided a Collin County resident with abortion-inducing drugs that ended the life of an unborn child and resulted in serious complications for the mother, who then required medical intervention. Texas laws prohibit a physician or medical supplier from providing any abortion-inducing drugs by courier, delivery, or mail service. Additionally, no physician may treat patients or prescribe Texas residents medicine through telehealth services unless the doctor holds a valid Texas medical license.
Dr. Carpenter knowingly treated Texas residents despite not being a licensed Texas physician and not being authorized to practice telemedicine in Texas. Attorney General Paxton requested the court enjoin Dr. Carpenter from violating Texas law and impose civil penalties of no less than $100,000 for each violation of the law.
“In this case, an out-of-state doctor violated the law and caused serious harm to this patient. This doctor prescribed abortion-inducing drugs—unauthorized, over telemedicine—causing her patient to end up in the hospital with serious complications. In Texas, we treasure the health and lives of mothers and babies, and this is why out-of-state doctors may not illegally and dangerously prescribe abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents,” said Attorney General Paxton.
The lawsuit states that in July, a pregnant woman “asked the biological father of her unborn child to be taken to the hospital because of hemorrhage or severe bleeding,” and he learned after she was seen by medical professionals at a hospital in Collin County that she had been nine weeks pregnant.
He “suspected that the biological mother had in fact done something to contribute to the miscarriage or abortion of the unborn child” and later discovered the medications from Carpenter, according to the lawsuit.
Paxton’s filing said that Carpenter is not licensed to practice medicine in Texas and argued that by conducting telehealth visits in Texas, she was violating a state administrative code requiring that physicians who treat and prescribe patients in the state hold full Texas medical licenses.
