Louisiana’s attorney general plans to sue the governors of California and New York in federal court to force the Democratic-run states to extradite doctors facing criminal charges for mailing abortion pills to Louisiana.
This comes on the heels of two criminal cases involving doctors accused of mailing abortion-inducing drugs to Louisiana residents, in turn violating state law.
Remy Coeytaux, a San Francisco Bay Area doctor, was charged in January for mailing abortion pills to a Louisiana woman.
Another lawsuit in Texas accuses Dr. Coeytaux of breaking Texas law banning anyone from providing a pregnant woman with abortion medication. The woman’s estranged husband ordered abortion medication from the California doctor, which she used to end her pregnancy, the lawsuit says.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he blocked Louisiana’s attempt to penalize the doctor.
“You’re defending a so-called doctor who sent abortion pills to a MAN so he could coerce his girlfriend into aborting their baby that she wanted to keep,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, Louisiana Republican, said to Mr. Newsom. “That is not health care, it’s drug dealing. You should be ashamed of yourself for facilitating this behavior.”
Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who practices north of New York City, was charged last year for mailing abortion medication to a Louisiana teenage girl to terminate her pregnancy, prosecutors say.
Louisiana has sent formal requests to California and New York to extradite both doctors.
Mr. Newsom and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul have refused to comply to Louisiana’s request to extradite the doctors, instead invoking their states’ abortion shield laws to protect them from prosecution in states where abortion is illegal.
“Kathy Hochul and Gavin Newsom are not above the Constitution, and we will hold them accountable,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement Thursday. “The Supreme Court’s precedents on important Constitutional provisions like the Extradition Clause and the Full Faith and Credit Clause forbid this assault on Louisiana’s sovereignty and her citizens.”
Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, interstate legal disputes over abortion have only increased. Louisiana boasts some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country, while California falls on the opposite end of the spectrum, aiming to strengthen legal protection for abortion providers.
In a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing in January, Ms. Murrill renewed calls for prosecution to stop the illegal use of abortion-inducing drugs in her state.
“Activists have created an organized and dangerous scheme of drug dealing protected by politicians,” she said in a January press conference. “These are not medical standards. There are no medical standards in any state that sanction such irresponsible actions by a medical professional, and political preferences do not justify placing women at such medical risk. These are not medical professionals, and this is not health care.”
• Mary McCue Bell can be reached at mbell@washingtontimes.com.
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