Abortion pill providers targeted by new Texas law refuse ‘anticipatory obedience’ | Abortion
Greg Abbott, the Republican Governor of Texas, signed a bill on Wednesday which allows people to continue anyone suspected of manufacturing, distribution or mail of the abortion pills to or from Texas. The first law of its kind is almost sure to considerably degenerate the confrontation of the State by the State on the laws on abortion in the United States of Post Roe against Wade – especially since certain abortion providers outside the State have already sworn that they will continue to send pills to the Texans.
“Our mantra as a practice is:” no anticipated obedience “,” said Dr. Angel Foster, co-founder of the Massachusetts Medication Access Project (MAP), a group based in Boston that uses telemedicine to ship patients to patients to the United States. “We will continue to provide care until we are unable to do so in the Massachusetts.”
Under the new law, which will take effect on December 4, abortion suppliers could incur penalties of at least $ 100,000 if they send pills by post to state, which prohibits practically all abortions. Pharmaceutical manufacturers that make drugs that Texans use for abortions could also be judged responsible, but they may be able to defend themselves by proving to court that they have adopted and implemented “a policy not to distribute, send by mail, transport, deliver, provide or own inductive drugs to abortion” – although the language of the law is somewhat ambiguous applies to Texas or more broadly. Women who take abortion pills are not eligible to be prosecuted.
“We want to create a responsibility for manufacturers who facilitate access,” said John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life and donor of the new legislation, in an interview before the adoption of the bill. AID ACCESS is one of the greatest telemedicine abortion services in the United States. He sent nearly 120,000 packs of abortion pills to American residents between 2023 and 2024.
Seago continued: “The best we can do at this stage is to create a higher responsibility and start trying to dissuade some of these people.”
The law represents the point of the campaign of the anti-abortion movement against the abortion pills and the telehealth, which have become increasingly popular in the years which followed the end of the Supreme Court of the United States, Roe V Wade in 2022. At the end of 2024, one in four American abortions was facilitated by Telemedicine, according to #Wacount, a research project family. #Wecount noted that in December 2024, nearly 4,000 Texans used the remote charts to put an end to their pregnancies.
Providers such as MAP electronic pills under legal innovations known as “shield laws”, which have been promulgated by a handful of blue states and aim to protect suppliers of abortion from prosecutions outside the state when they send pills to prohibited states. However, the shield laws have not yet been seriously tested in court.
Rachel Rebouché, professor at the University of Texas, Austin School of Law who studies the laws on the shield, said that the new law of Texas is the first legislative challenge to protect laws. But the state has already challenged them by other means. The Texas Attorney General, Republican Ken Paxton, has sent letters to stop ceasing the suppliers of abortion pills and a website that provides information on abortion pills. He also continued a New York doctor accused of sent abortion pills to a Texan, as well as a New York court who said that the New York Shield Act prevented him from enforcing a fine of Texas against the doctor. New York Prosecutor General Letitia James said she would intervene in this trial.
Many providers of post-or abortion pills have underlined Rebouche, have already admitted that their work has a lot of risks. “But that could relax, it could hinder or dissuade people who do not want to be involved, who do not want to face the risk of responsibility.”
His Harbor, an organization that uses shield laws to send people’s abortion pills and has received one of the letters to stop ceased and paxton-descents, does not intend to block the Texans of his services, said Debra Lynch, a nurse practitioner who works with the group, in an interview before Abbott signs the law. In fact, while Texas law approached adoption in the State Legislative Assembly, its port of Safe began to receive numerous requests for help from the patients he had to double his number of abortion providers, according to Lynch.
“Even if a law was adopted which said that they would come after us criminally and not civilly – that would have no impact on the services we provide,” said Lynch. “It is important that women know it.”
