A New York county clerk used the state’s defend legislation to cease Texas from punishing a New York physician for prescribing and sending abortion medicine to a Texas lady.
The transfer is the newest escalation in an interstate battle between New York and Texas, their differing abortion legal guidelines and the way forward for Margaret Carpenter, a New York state physician who works at a telemedicine abortion group.
In December, Texas Lawyer Common Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit towards Carpenter for violating the state’s abortion ban after she allegedly prescribed and mailed abortion medicine to a 20-year-old Texan lady.
Neither Carpenter nor her lawyer responded to the lawsuit or confirmed as much as a listening to relating to the fees in Texas final month, based on The New York Occasions.
A Texas decide ordered Carpenter final month to pay greater than $100,000 in penalties for prescribing abortion medicine to the Texas lady. The Texas lawyer normal’s workplace then adopted up with the New York clerk’s workplace to see if it might implement the default civil judgment.
However the nation clerk refused.
“In accordance with the New York State Shield Law, I have refused this filing and will refuse any similar filings that may come to our office,” mentioned Appearing Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck in an announcement.
“Since the decision is likely to result in further litigation, I must refrain from discussing specific details about the situation.”
New York is one in every of eight states that has enacted a telemedicine abortion defend legislation that protects suppliers from extradition requests and different authorized actions from officers in states with abortion restrictions for serving to or performing abortions.
Paxton mentioned that the county clerk’s resolution wouldn’t cease him from pursuing different avenues to implement Texas’ abortion ban.
“I am outraged that New York would refuse to allow Texas to pursue enforcement of a civil judgment against a radical abortionist illegally peddling dangerous drugs across state lines. New York is shredding the Constitution to hide lawbreakers from justice, and it must end,” he mentioned in an announcement. “I will not stop my efforts to enforce Texas’s pro-life laws that protect our unborn children and mothers.”
