By Daniel Wiessner
Jan 27 (Reuters) – The office of Texas’ Republican Attorney General, Ken Paxton, on Tuesday sued a Delaware-based nurse practitioner for allegedly prescribing and mailing abortion pills to women in Texas, a new front in a nationwide battle over access to abortion drugs.
Paxton’s office filed a petition in Texas state court accusing Debra Lynch, the founder of telemedicine service Her Safe Harbor, of violating the state’s abortion ban and practicing medicine without a license.
The case is the latest by officials in Republican states that have banned abortion to seek to curb access to the abortion drug mifepristone, which is used in 60% of U.S. abortions and can be prescribed remotely and dispensed through the mail.
Any ruling against Lynch could only be enforced by officials or courts in Delaware, one of more than a dozen Democratic-led states with “shield laws” protecting healthcare providers against out-of-state investigations and prosecutions.
Along with a similar case by Paxton’s office against a doctor in New York, Tuesday’s lawsuit could be an important test of whether those laws can stand up to bans or restrictions on abortion in about half of U.S. states.
“Lynch’s operation is part of a growing network of out-of-state abortion traffickers that deliberately target Texas residents and defy this State’s duly enacted protections for unborn children and their mothers,” Paxton’s office said in the court filing.
Her Safe Harbor, which says on its website that it provides abortion pills to women in all 50 states, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Lynch could not immediately be reached directly.
In the New York case, Paxton’s office is seeking to force a county official to enforce a $100,000 judgment from a Texas court against a doctor who allegedly prescribed abortion drugs to a Texas woman via telemedicine.
A New York state judge dismissed the case in October, citing the state’s shield law. Texas has appealed.
The doctor, Margaret Carpenter, has separately been indicted by a Louisiana grand jury for prescribing abortion pills that were taken by a teenager there. This marked the first time that a doctor was criminally charged in another state for prescribing abortion drugs. New York has refused to extradite Carpenter to Louisiana to face the charges.
(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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