New Legal Tactic Limiting Abortions Where Protected Is Only Latest

WASHINGTON - Dec. 16, 2024 - PRLog -- In the latest and perhaps most brazen (or at least far reaching) attempt to limit abortion rights, a doctor in New York (which protects abortion rights) is being sued by Texas Attorney General [AG] Ken Paxton for allegedly prescribing abortion-inducing pills for a woman in Texas (where abortions are virtually banned).

It's reportedly the first - of what probably will be many - major legal challenge to "shield laws" enacted by some states such as New York to protect doctors providing abortion access.

If the AG obtains a default judgment against the doctor, who is unlikely to set foot in Texas to defend herself, he could try to enforce it in any state where the doctor has a residence, practices medicine, or otherwise has property.  At the very least it could put the doctor at some risk if she travels, notes public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

Recently a legal action was brought seeking to charge friends, who helped a pregnant woman obtain abortion pills, with murder.

But this kind of threat, as well as others likewise based upon novel but not necessarily frivolous legal theories, remain possibilities in Texas as well as in other states, says Banzhaf, who predicted it, and has published a detailed legal analysis of the novel legal tactics those who oppose abortion are already using or are planning to use.

With so much effort and attention now being focused on blocking proposed legislation which would severely restrict abortions, and learning to live with such laws where they have already been enacted, it's not surprising that abortion rights advocates have largely not yet focused on new emerging criminal and civil legal actions which constitute equally important threats to reproductive freedom and the rights of women, says Banzhaf, who has won over 100 legal actions battling discrimination against women.

For this reason, Banzhaf has published a new analysis of these new legal threats, including:
(1) fetal personhood laws and bills,
(2) lawsuits brought on behalf of the estates of fetuses which were aborted, and
(3) lawsuits purporting to be on behalf of a still-living fetus against the woman with whom the father resides, and possibly against others also
in: How Fetal Personhood and Fetal Estate Lawsuits Threaten Abortion Rights (https://lawandcrime.com/opinion/how-fetal-personhood-and-...)

About this new Texas law suit, the Center for Reproductive Rights labeled it "a chilling attempt to scare doctors in other states from providing abortion care.  Telemedicine and medication abortion have been lifelines for people who live in states where abortion is banned . . . Now, anti-abortion officials like Attorney General Paxton are using fear to crush what little access remains for their residents."

http://banzhaf.net/   jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com   @profbanzhaf