A county clerk in New York refused Thursday to file a more than $100,000 judgment from Texas against a doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to a woman near Dallas, setting up a potential challenge to laws designed to shield abortion providers who serve patients in states with abortion bans.
A Texas judge last month ordered Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who practices north of New York City, to pay the penalty for allegedly breaking that state’s law by prescribing abortion medication via telemedicine. The Texas attorney general’s office followed up last week by asking a New York court to enforce the default civil judgment, which is $113,000 with attorney and filing fees.
The acting Ulster County 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. Since this decision is likely to result in further litigation, I must refrain from discussing specific details about the situation,” Acting Clerk Taylor Bruck said in a prepared statement.
New York is among eight states with telemedicine shield laws, which were considered a target for abortion opponents even before the standoff between officials New York and Texas.
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul last month invoked her state’s shield law in rejecting Republican Gov. Jeff Landry’s request to extradite Carpenter to Louisiana, where the doctor was charged with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor.
Hochul on Thursday praised Bruck’s refusal and said “New York is grateful for his courage and common sense.”
See here, here, and here for the background. We’re basically following a script right now, and everything has gone as one would expect. When the federal courts get involved, that’s when we start ad libbing. Stay tuned.
The linked story includes this:
“In the Texas case, the state’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has said that the 20-year-old woman who received the pills ended up in a hospital with complications. It was only after that, the state said in its filing, that the man described as “the biological father of the unborn child” learned of the pregnancy and the abortion.”
Regardless of whether it’s true (AG now has carte blance to lie in pleadings, per SCOTX), it’s a plausible scenario.
If you (Democrats) take sex equality seriously, you will have to tackle this issue:
The man is on the hook if the pregnant woman chooses to give birth and wants child support regardless of whether he wanted a child, and if she applies for and accepts public aid, Attorney General Ken Paxton will file a paternity action (now parentage suit or suit to establish the parent-child relationship, but it’s no different) against him and garnish his wages or salary. Can be done even pre-birth.
Can also be done after birth, with awards of retro-active child support and birth expenses. How is that fair? They take his money, but years may have gone by and may not even have known that he is a baby daddy, and had no opportunity to step up and embrace his role as a father.
Then you have the scenario where the man (husband, boyfriend) is ready to be a parent, but the woman is not and gets a abortion. You have zero sympathy for that guy.
The things is this:
How can you continue to pretend that human reproduction is just a woman’s thing.
and that man/men has/have no interest in pregancy?
If you have no answer to these kinds of questions and concerns, keep losing elections.
Stop taking about abortion when running for office.
Start talking sense about how men and women can get together again, fall in love, make love, make babies, and raise a family together.