The New York Attorney General joins the historic legal battle for an abortion supplier outside the State

New York Prosecutor General, Letitia James intervenes in a historic legal battle involving a doctor from New York who would have prescribed abortion pills via tele -residents to a patient in Collin, Texas.

James sent a letter to a judge from the Supreme Court of the State in the County of Ulster, New York, on Monday in New York to defend the state’s “shield law”, which prohibits state officials from cooperating with New York providers in surveys offering abortions outside the state. The letter responds to a trial brought by the Attorney General of Texas Ken Paxton.

Action is a major evolution of the legal battle – one of the first challenges of the New York Shield Act since it was promulgated in 2023. It comes in the midst of a growing fracture in access to reproductive care through the country after the fall of Roe v. Wade, some states deepening their defense of abortion rights and others that have adopted new laws that restrict access.

“I intervened to defend the integrity of our laws and our courts against this blatant affection,” James said in a statement shared with NBC News on Monday before joining the trial. “Texas has no authority in New York, and no power to impose its ban on cruel abortion here.”

The dispute dates back to December, when Paxton continued the New York doctor, Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, for pretending to prescribe mifepristone and misoprostol – the two pills involved in a drug abortion – to a Texas patient. Paxton said that the doctor had violated the ban on the almost total abortion of Texas as well as a law of the State which obliges doctors who carry out abortions in Texas to have a medical license in Texas.

Carpenter is one of the founders of the abortion coalition for telemedicine, a plea group that supports abortion by telemedicine.

In February, a Texas judge ordered Carpenter to pay more than $ 100,000 in penalties, but a County clerk in Ulster County, New York, refused twice to apply the fine, citing the New York shield law as justification.

In response, Paxton continued the county clerk in July and said that the New York shield law was unconstitutional. This opened the way to James, who had criticized Paxton’s actions, to officially intervene to defend New York law.

His office is now joining the trial against the County clerk and will help plead the case before the Supreme Court of Ulster County.

James’ office said it was planning to file written arguments before September 19. She will claim that Texas cannot use the New York courts to enforce its abortion laws and that New York has the legal right to protect its residents and health care providers.

The same doctor at the heart of the prosecution in Texas was charged by a large Louisiana jury in January for having allegedly sent abortion pills to a teenager. The distribution of abortion pills with the intention of provoking an abortion is considered a crime in Louisiana.

The case was the first known example of criminal accusations filed against a doctor for having allegedly sent abortion pills to another state after Roe v. Wade has been canceled. The governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, signed a mandate in February so that the doctor was extradited in his state, but the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, refused the request, pointing again to the New York Shield Act.

“We are not going to stop trying to extradite her and prosecuting her for the crimes she commits in our state,” said the prosecutor general of Louisiana, Liz Murrill, about Carpenter during a testimony in favor of an anti-abortion bill in May.

The results in Texas and Louisiana could establish a precedent on the way in which the national courts interpret the laws on the shield in the midst of increasing legal challenges against them. Twenty-two states and Washington, DC, have laws on the protective which offer a certain degree of protection for procreation care, according to the center of the UCLA law on health, law and UCLA policy. And eight states – including New York, California, Colorado and Maine – have adopted laws that specifically protect prosecution providers for prescribing abortion pills practically for people from other states.

In July, on the 16 public prosecutor general of state sent a letter to the congress asking him to take measures to pre -empt the laws on the abortion shield. The Senate of the State of Texas also adopted a bill last week which would allow private residents to prosecute providers outside the State who give abortion pills to people of their state. The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, should sign the bill every day.