Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has signed a first-of-its-kind law that lets anyone sue prescribers and others responsible for getting abortion pills into the state.
Supporters are heralding the law, which Abbott signed Wednesday, as a way to enforce an existing ban. Abortion-rights advocates are bashing the law, saying it has the potential to turn abortion opponents, aggrieved former lovers and others into bounty hunters.
But it doesn't mean that organizations will stop sending pills into Texas.
Angel Foster, who runs Massachusetts-based The MAP, which prescribes the regimen of pills to women in every state, said her organization will keep sending pills to women in Texas, as it has about 10,000 times in the past two years.
“We really don’t change things unless we’re legally required to,” she said.
Rebecca Nall, the founder of I Need an A, which runs a website with abortion access information, suggested other providers also won't change.
“We’re confident people in Texas (and every state) will still be able to get abortion pills by mail,” she said in an email.
The majority of abortions in the U.S. employ pills, usually a combination of the drugs misoprostol and mifepristone.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and allowed states to enforce abortion bans, the method has moved to the center of the latest legal and political battles.
At least eight Democratic-controlled states have adopted shield laws that seek to protect medical professionals in their borders who prescribe the pills via telehealth and send them to patients in states where abortion or telehealth pill prescriptions are banned.
Those prescriptions are a key reason that the number of abortions has not fallen despite 12 states enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four more barring it after about six weeks of gestation.
The Texas law, which is to take effect in three months, builds on an approach the state used when it implemented an earlier abortion ban: leaving enforcement to private people filing lawsuits rather than the government.
Under this measure, anyone could file a claim for $100,000 against people who cause the pills to be sent to Texas.
If a pregnant woman, the man who impregnated her or other close relatives sue successfully, they could be entitled to collect the entire $100,000. Others who sue would be in line for $10,000 — with the other $90,000 going to charity.
The law also answers a provision of shield laws that allows protected prescribers to sue those who sue them. The Texas law says that would not apply for the civil suits that originate there.
The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, which provides legal and other support for abortion pill prescribers, is telling members that the shield laws should protect them from civil suits from Texas, said McKensey Smith, the group's deputy director.
Texas, the nation’s second most populous state, accounts for about one-third of the pills The MAP prescribes.
Foster said that she expects other prescribers to keep sending the pills to Texas, too.
She still anticipates the law will have an impact: Women seeking abortion in Texas could stop telling others that they are planning to seek pills from out-of-state providers lest those confidants use the information to launch lawsuits.
“One of the effects will be to isolate abortion patients in Texas,” Foster said.
Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, said she expects that people sued under the Texas law will make their own court claims, arguing that it is not enforceable.
“The drug manufacturers and the providers are all willing to take the risk that the shield laws will protect them,” she said.
She said the result could be individual court decisions on whether the Texas law applies in certain circumstances rather than one sweeping ruling.
Those suits won't be the first legal test around abortion pills, though.
Last month, Texas and Florida asked a court if they could join a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Idaho, Kansas and Missouri that seeks to have some federal approvals for mifepristone rolled back — and possibly blocking telehealth prescriptions for it.
And a New York doctor accused of shipping pills out of state faces two legal actions: criminal charges in Louisiana and a civil judgment in Texas. New York officials are refusing to extradite her or to enforce the judgment.
