And the stakes get raised again.
A New York doctor was criminally indicted Friday for allegedly prescribing abortion pills to a girl in Louisiana in what appears to be the first time an abortion provider has been prosecuted since Roe v. Wade was overturned nearly three years ago. The case sets up one of the first major legal challenges to the “shield laws” enacted by some Democratic-led states to protect doctors providing abortion access in the wake of the Supreme Court ending the constitutional right to an abortion.
Grand jurors in West Baton Rouge parish indicted Margaret Carpenter, 55, with effecting a criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducing drugs, court records show. They also indicted Carpenter’s company, Nightingale Medical. She faces one to five years in prison and a $5,000 to $50,000 fine if convicted of violating a 2022 Louisiana law that bans abortion.
Tony Clayton, the district attorney who represents West Baton Rouge parish, said Carpenter prescribed abortion medication to a girl under the age of 18 in April. The girl’s mother, whom The Washington Post is not naming to protect her daughter’s identity, was also charged with carrying out a criminal abortion. Clayton declined to give the girl’s age.
Carpenter did not immediately respond Friday to requests for comment from The Post. But the organization that she co-founded, the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, called the indictment “the latest in a series of threats that jeopardizes women’s access to reproductive healthcare throughout this country.”
“Make no mistake, since Roe v Wade was overturned, we’ve witnessed a disturbing pattern of interference with women’s rights,” the coalition said in a statement. “It’s no secret the United States has a history of violence and harassment against abortion providers, and this state-sponsored effort to prosecute a doctor providing safe and effective care should alarm everyone.”
Abortion pills are banned in 18 states, restricted in 10 and legal in 22 states and D.C., according to a database from The Post.
Two abortion medication experts said Carpenter’s case was the first of a doctor being criminally charged with prescribing pills to an out-of-state patient who then went through with their abortion. Greer Donley, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s law school who studies abortion medication and interjurisdictional abortion conflicts, said she wasn’t surprised but “disheartened” by Carpenter’s prosecution.
A second expert went a step further, saying it was the only time since Roe fell that any doctor has been criminally charged.
“This is the first,” said David Cohen, professor at Drexel University’s law school who studies abortion and the legal landscape after the Supreme Court overturned Roe with its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Cohen said he had “informally advised” Carpenter in the past but has had no involvement in any of her legal cases.
[…]
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) said she would protect New York doctors who provide abortion pills across state lines. James called the case against Carpenter a “cowardly attempt out of Louisiana to weaponize the law against out-of-state providers” that was “unjust and un-American.”
“The criminalization of abortion care is a direct and brazen attack on Americans’ bodily autonomy and their right to reproductive freedom,” James said in a statement, adding: “We will not allow bad actors to undermine our providers’ ability to deliver critical care. Medication abortion is safe, effective, and necessary, and New York will ensure that it remains available to all Americans who need it.”
In 2023, New York lawmakers passed a shield law to protect doctors who prescribe abortion pills to patients in other states, especially those with passed laws restricting or banning abortions.
On Friday afternoon, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said Carpenter’s prosecution is exactly the scenario she and other lawmakers feared when passing the law, and that she planned to use it to refuse any requests to extradite Carpenter.
“I will never under any circumstances turn this doctor over to the state of Louisiana,” she said in an Instagram video.
[…]
Cohen said he doesn’t know if Clayton’s decision to go after Carpenter will encourage prosecutors to follow suit given how localized and fractured criminal prosecution is in the United States. Donley said the case probably won’t trigger a wave of others, since patients in antiabortion states who seek out-of-state doctors to help them have little incentive to report what they’ve done to law enforcement.
But, Donley added, indicting Carpenter isn’t just about prosecuting her but also sending a message to other doctors who are doing the same. It’s part of a larger effort to smear abortion, to make legitimate medical care seem wrong and criminal, she said.
It’s also about intimidating doctors, Donley added.
“This is absolutely intended to cause fear, cause confusion, chill care,” she said.
If the name Margaret Carpenter sounds familiar, it’s because she’s the doctor who was sued by Ken Paxton in December for providing mifepristone to a woman in Texas. That woman hadn’t told her partner she was pregnant – she had some bleeding after taking the pills, which led to his discovery. He was the one who then tipped off Ken Paxton, and I’m willing to bet there’s some other aggrieved person behind this complaint. I’ll hand it over to Jessica Valenti:
Louisiana district attorney Tony Clayton didn’t just bring charges against Carpenter—he also arrested and indicted the patient’s mother, who obtained the pills. Clayton claims the woman coerced her daughter into having an abortion, but as the Louisiana Illuminator points out, “coerced abortion” was not cited in the indictment.
While we don’t know the circumstances around the teen’s abortion, we do know that conservative prosecutors have a history of lying about these cases or misleading press and the public. When Paxton sued Carpenter last month, for example, he claimed that a woman had “serious complications” after taking abortion medication—but his suit showed nothing of the sort.
[…]
There’s also a broader context here: The charges in Louisiana come at the same time that conservative state lawmakers are pushing and passing policies to prosecute anyone who helps a woman or girl get an abortion. This week, the Trump administration also gave anti-abortion extremists the green light to attack abortion providers without fear of consequence, and Republican lawmakers introduced legislation to repeal the FACE Act—the federal law prohibiting violence against clinics.
In other words, Republicans are launching a full-scale assault on doctors, patients, and the community members who support them both. More than that, they clearly want what’s happening in Louisiana to be a big, showy, public case. I mean, Clayton went on a talk show today to publicize the case!
Louisiana’s Attorney General Liz Murrill also highlighted the charges, tweeting earlier today:
“It is illegal to send abortion pills into this State and it’s illegal to coerce another into having an abortion. I have said it before and I will say it again: We will hold individuals accountable for breaking the law.”
Why make a big deal out of a criminal case that’s likely to be very, very unpopular? Because anti-abortion activists and big-money donors want to get this issue in front of the Supreme Court.
For example, the billionaire-backed Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), has been leading the charge against mifepristone since Roe was overturned. As researcher Ansev Demirhan pointed out last year, RAGA AGs were behind attacks on the FDA’s mifepristone regulations, they’ve threatened pharmacies against distributing the pills, and they filed an amicus brief to urge a Texas court to block the FDA’s approval of mailing mifepristone.
Now, with abortion medication allowing those in states with bans to get care, these extremist AGs, activists and donors want to make an example of a doctor—with SCOTUS’ help. It’s likely that Republican attorneys generals have been searching for the perfect case, and Louisiana AG Murrill was first to the finish line. And boy is she pleased to have a talking point:
This case really does have precisely what conservatives have been looking for—and everything I’ve warned about since Roe was overturned. I started raising the alarm over anti-abortion messaging around ‘coercion,’ for example, in 2023. That’s when the Charlotte Lozier Institute started to suggest Republicans use ‘coercion’ in their policies and cases because “no one is openly in favor of coerced abortions.” The tactic has only grown since.
Similarly, Republicans have been especially eager to restrict teenagers’ access to abortion: Both Tennessee and Idaho passed laws recently that made it a crime to help a teen obtain an abortion in any way. And when three Republican AGs brought their most recent case against the FDA over mifepristone, they focused in on revoking access for teens, out of supposed fear for their “developing reproductive systems.”
Finally, Republican AGs have been on the lookout for a case with an unsympathetic defendant. A mother who coerced her daughter into an abortion is a perfect victim for conservatives’ anti-abortion agenda. (Whether she actually coerced the teen or not.) We also saw this tactic in Idaho, when the state brought its first ‘abortion trafficking’ charges against a mother and son who had coerced the son’s girlfriend into an out-of-state abortion.
In short: The Louisiana AG clearly thinks she has found a winner of a case that she can bring to the Supreme Court to target out-of-state abortion providers. And I think if we do a little bit of digging, we’ll find that it isn’t just Murrill behind this move—but a national anti-abortion strategy backed by extremist billionaire dollars.
One other point to add is that however this turns out, there will be serious repercussions on Carpenter, possibly even after a favorable resolution for her in court. For as long as this indictment is in effect, she can’t travel anywhere that abortion is illegal and she probably can’t take commercial aircraft or drive across the Canadian border, because the risk that some law enforcement officer from outside New York or from a federal agency might detain her for the purpose of handing her over to Louisiana. Even if SCOTUS eventually rules that Louisiana can’t compel New York to take any action against her, unless the drop the charges the same legal jeopardy exists for her. The fear in itself isn’t the point – I agree with Jessica Valenti that the goals are much bigger – but it will have an effect. Reuters, CBS News, The 19th, and Mother Jones, which incorrectly calls Dr. Carpenter “Margaret Cambell”, have more.