In December, Texas filed a lawsuit against New York’s Dr. Margaret Carpenter for allegedly mailing abortion pills to a Dallas woman. A month later, a Louisiana jury indicted Carpenter for allegedly mailing abortion pills to a Louisiana woman, who gave the pills to her teenage daughter; the felony charge against Carpenter comes with the threat of five years in prison. As of this week, there are some chilling new developments in both cases: On Wednesday, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and state Attorney General Liz Murrill, both Republicans, signed an extradition warrant for Carpenter to be brought to Louisiana to stand trial. And a Texas judge ordered Carpenter to pay a penalty of more than $100,000 in the civil case brought forth by state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R).
However, shield laws currently protect Carptner, and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) has been unequivocal in refusing to extradite her. “Louisiana has changed their laws, but that has no bearing on the laws here in the state of New York,” Hochul told reporters on Thursday. “Doctors take an oath to protect their patients. I took an oath of office to protect all New Yorkers, and I will uphold not only our constitution, but also the laws of our land. And I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana. Not now, not ever.”
Louisiana enforces a total abortion ban punishable with up to 15 years in prison; it also passed the first law in the nation that criminalizes possession of abortion pills in most cases. But New York is one of several states to enforce shield laws, which protect health care workers from legal threats for providing abortion care to patients from states that ban abortion—including via mailing pills across state lines. New York’s shield law also protects Carpenter from the $100,000 penalty coming from Texas. But the entire point of both of these actions—the criminal charge from Louisiana and the civil suit from Texas—is to challenge shield laws, testing their limits and prompting a series of court battles that could wind up at the Supreme Court.
“Dr. Carpenter needs to be careful with her travel plans,” Murrill posted on social media last Friday. In a statement to the Louisiana Illuminator this week, Murrill suggested Carpenter could face arrest if she sets foot in a GOP-led state: “New York officials, including the governor, are not at liberty to ignore interstate compacts and laws regarding extradition. The doctor could be arrested in other places. If New York won’t cooperate, there are other states that will.” Of course, it’s not that simple.
Attorney Alejandra Caraballo, co-author of the 2023 CUNY law review article Extradition in Post-Roe America, told Jezebel that what’s likely to come next is fairly thorny—and she expects these challenges to New York’s shield law to wind up at the Supreme Court. In Texas’ civil case, she anticipates the state will seek enforcement in New York state court; states are typically required to follow other states’ court orders—but New York’s shield law explicitly bars this, which could lead to a showdown in federal court, possibly winding up at SCOTUS. As for Louisiana’s case, the state is expected to ask a federal court to order extradition, which is also likely to trigger a court battle that could work its way up to the high court. But Caraballo stressed that Louisiana’s extradition case is complicated by the fact that Carpenter doesn’t meet the definition of a “fugitive,” because she didn’t travel to Louisiana, commit a crime, then flee.
The last time the Supreme Court decided an extradition case was Puerto Rico v. Branstad in 1987, when the governor of Iowa tried to protect an Iowan who traveled to Puerto Rico, was charged with first degree and attempted murder, then fled back to Iowa, from extradition. Caraballo says that this case was essentially open-and-shut because the man in question, Ronald Calder, committed the crime in Puerto Rico; he was promptly extradited, and the ruling gave federal courts power to order the extradition of fugitives.
Before that, the Supreme Court decided Kentucky v. Dennison in 1861, a case that saw Kentucky try to arrest and punish an Ohioan who helped an enslaved person from Kentucky escape. Ohio officials refused to extradite the Ohioan in question, as theirs was a free state that abhorred slavery. On the eve of the Civil War, Cabello says the court “essentially split the baby” with their ruling, determining that Ohio didn’t have the right to deny Kentucky’s order—but that the court didn’t have the power to enforce it.
And now, here we are, in what Caraballo sees as uncharted legal territory that the U.S. Constitution isn’t equipped to handle. “We haven’t really seen this kind of disparity in state laws around human rights since the Civil War, where, what constitutes a human right in one state, constitutes a capital crime in another,” Caraballo said. “The federal Constitution is not set up to manage that. The last time we had this kind of disparity led to the full breakdown of calamity of the states, to the Civil War.”
Jezebel contacted all 28 GOP state attorneys general, including Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, who serves as chairman of the Republican Attorneys General Association, for comment on whether they’d support arresting Carpenter should she travel to their states. We’ll update if they respond.
Carpenter is essentially bound to stay in New York right now, Caraballo says. Should she travel internationally, she could be apprehended by border patrol agents upon her return. And there are a range of other concerning possibilities because of who’s in the White House. “I think there’s a reason we’re seeing [anti-abortion] states take these actions now and not a year ago,” Caraballo said. It’s not impossible that the Trump-run Justice Department would bring federal charges against Carpenter under the Comstock Act, a dormant, 1873 law that prohibits the mailing of “obscene” materials, Caraballo warns. Nor is it impossible that Trump “will simply send federal marshals and bypass the extradition process.”
The Louisiana jury indicted not just Carpenter, but the Louisiana mother, on January 31. They were both charged with criminal abortion by means of abortion-inducing drugs, which is a felony in Louisiana. The mother was arrested and is currently out on bond. Since, Louisiana officials have made a range of head-spinning statements to justify their heinous actions, including, without evidence, referring to Carpenter as a “drug dealer” and claiming that the mother “coerced” her daughter to take the abortion pills.
“This child was NOT this doctor’s patient,” Murril wrote in a Thursday tweet. “She never met her, saw her, or knew anything about her. The child is a victim. @GovKathyHochul is protecting a drug dealer who victimized a child.” Of course, I’d argue that the real people victimizing children are those who would force a child to be pregnant against their will, and criminalize the adults who helped her. Landry, meanwhile, wrote a bizarre fan fiction about the Louisiana teen who we know nothing about, claiming without any evidence that she “was excited to have a baby and was planning a gender reveal party. Her mom conspired with a NY doctor to get a chemical abortion pill in the mail and coerced her to take it.” It’s frankly insulting how stupid these people think we all are.
Anti-abortion officials have increasingly relied on this refrain about “coercion” to dishonestly equate abortion access with abuse. But here’s a dark irony that makes me want to run through a wall in rage like the Kool-Aid Man: Texas was only able to bring forth its civil case against Carpenter through Paxton and anti-abortion activists’ recruiting efforts to find abusive, shitty men willing to snitch on their partners’ abortions. This then allows anti-abortion states to sue out-of-state doctors to challenge and try to throw out shield laws altogether—all thanks to almost cartoonishly evil ghouls frothing at the mouth to commit acts of reproductive coercion against their partners. Texas Right to Life told the New York Times on Thursday we can expect additional lawsuits from these men in the coming weeks.
It bears repeating that shield laws have been a lifeline in the post-Dobbs era—that’s precisely why anti-abortion states are so determined to destroy them. The Times reports that health providers in states with abortion rights have been sending over 10,000 abortion pills per month to patients in abortion-banned states since summer 2023. “Shield laws are essential in safeguarding and enabling abortion care regardless of a patient’s ZIP code or ability to pay,” the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, an organization co-founded by Carpenter, said in a recent statement. “They are fundamental to ensuring everyone can access reproductive health care as a human right.”
GET JEZEBEL RIGHT IN YOUR INBOX
Still here. Still without airbrushing. Still with teeth.
