A legal fight between Texas and New York over abortion access just hit another boiling point, and this time, New York made it very clear it’s not backing down.
On Monday, Ulster County’s Acting Clerk Taylor Bruck once again rejected Texas’ attempt to enforce a $100,000 civil judgment against Dr. Margaret Carpenter, a New York physician accused of violating Texas’ strict abortion ban by prescribing abortion pills to someone in Texas through telemedicine, reported The Hill. This is the second time Bruck has turned down the request, and his response made it clear where New York stands.
In a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office, Bruck pointed directly to New York’s recently passed “shield law,” which was designed to protect providers who offer abortion care legally in New York—even if it’s to someone in a state where abortion is banned. The law blocks other states from being able to enforce their abortion restrictions in New York, and Bruck said Paxton’s team hadn’t provided anything new to change that.
“While I’m not entirely sure how things work in Texas, here in New York, a rejection means the matter is closed,” Bruck wrote. He’s also currently running for county clerk as a Democrat, and clearly not afraid to lean into this fight.
Neither Paxton’s office nor the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, which Carpenter co-founded, responded to media requests right away. But the political tension is already spilling over.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who pushed hard to pass the shield law earlier this year, came out in full support of Bruck’s decision. “Our response to (Texas’) baseless claim is clear no way in hell. New York won’t be bullied,” she said in a fiery statement. “Defending the freedom generations of women fought to secure” is how she described Bruck’s move.
This all comes as medication abortion—using pills like mifepristone and misoprostol—has taken center stage in the national abortion debate. These pills are now used in more than half of all abortions in the U.S., and since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, states like Texas have rushed to ban or severely restrict access to them.
Back in February, a judge in Collin County, Texas, handed down a default judgment against Carpenter after she didn’t respond to a civil suit accusing her of prescribing those same pills to a Texas patient. But that’s not the only legal action she’s facing. A grand jury in Louisiana also indicted her for prescribing an abortion pill to a teenager there. That case was notable because it marked the first time a doctor in one state was criminally charged by another state over abortion medications.
New York refused to comply with Louisiana’s request to extradite her. Governor Hochul made that decision earlier this year as part of the state’s effort to shield reproductive health providers from prosecution in other states.
Now, with two states pushing back hard, Texas is running into serious resistance as it tries to extend its abortion ban beyond its borders. And with officials like Bruck and Hochul standing firm, this legal standoff isn’t cooling off anytime soon.