A New York doctor has been hit with $100,000 in penalties for prescribing a Texas woman abortion-inducing medication in violation of the state’s near total abortion ban.
Dr. Maggie Carpenter also violated another Texas law by seeing patients in the state through telehealth appointments without a license to practice medicine there, a Texas state judge said Thursday in a written order.
The suit marks one of the first challenges to a shield law that Democratic-led states including New York passed to protect physicians after the US Supreme Court ended a constitutional right to an abortion.
Judge Bryant Gantt of the 471st district court in Collin County issued the six-figure penalty after Carpenter failed to respond to a December lawsuit from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R). Carpenter also didn’t attend a hearing Wednesday on a motion for default judgment.
The penalty will accrue interest until paid, Gantt said in the order.
Paxton’s lawsuit alleges Carpenter, co-medical director and founder of Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, prescribed abortion-inducing drugs mifepristone and misoprostol to a 20-year-old woman from the Dallas-area. The woman went to a hospital with severe bleeding in her ninth week of pregnancy and lost the child, the suit said.
Texas prohibits abortions except to protect the mother from a life-threatening physical condition.
The case is Texas v. Carpenter, Tex. Dist. Ct., No. 471-08943-2024, 2/13/25.
To contact the reporter on this story:
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Learn more about Bloomberg Law or Log In to keep reading:
Learn About Bloomberg Law
AI-powered legal analytics, workflow tools and premium legal & business news.
Already a subscriber?
Log in to keep reading or access research tools.