(LifeSiteNews) — The war between pro-life states and the underground black market abortion pill networks has escalated once again.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has issued a series of cease-and-desist letters to radical abortion organizations “demanding an immediate end to the unlawful advertising, sale, and shipment of abortion-inducing drugs into the State of Texas.”
According to an August 20 press release from the AG’s office, Paxton’s formal legal action “follows two tragic cases in Texas in which radical abortion activists and organizations facilitated men illegally purchasing abortion-inducing drugs”; one man poisoned his girlfriend, “causing the death of their unborn child and sending the mother to the hospital.”
Even the language used by the Texas AG office highlights the growing divide between abortion states and pro-life states. In pro-life states, the humanity of the “unborn child” is legally recognized, even though the level of protection varies; in abortion states, this recognition of scientific reality is rejected as propaganda in order the further the fiction that abortion does not kill a human being.
Paxton pinpointed two organizations in particular: Plan C, which bills itself as an organization that provides “abortion pills by mail in every state,” and Her Safe Harbor, a Delaware-based abortion pill dispenser that also promises to ship abortion pills anywhere in America within four to six days. (There is a perverse irony in an abortion organization calling itself “Her Safe Harbor” while advertising pills that expel unborn children from what should be the safest place in the word: their mother’s wombs.)
“Texas will not tolerate the murdering of innocent life through illegal drug trafficking,” said Attorney General Paxton. “These abortion drug organizations and radical activists are not above the law, and I have ordered the immediate end of this unlawful conduct. This is a flagrant violation of both state and federal laws, and we are going to do everything in our power to protect mothers and unborn babies.” The abortion pill shipments, said Paxton, violate both Texas law and the federal Comstock Act.
Paxton stated that a failure to comply with his order “could result in further legal action, lawsuits seeking injunctive relief, and civil penalties of no less than $100,000 per violation under Texas law.” According to his letter to Plan C:
If Plan C refuses to comply, a formal investigation will be initiated, and the Attorney General may bring a lawsuit against Plan C for injunctive relief and civil penalties. If the Attorney General finds that Plan C has committed violations of Texas’s abortion laws, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent permitted by law. The Attorney General may seek civil penalties for violations of the Human Life Protection Act of not less than $100,000 per violation and civil penalties for violations of the DTPA of up to $10,000 per violation.
A similar battle is playing out between political leaders in Louisiana and New York after a West Baton Rouge grand jury indicted New York abortionist Margaret Carpenter early this year for supplying a Louisiana mother with abortion pills, which she coerced her daughter to take. Her daughter had wanted her baby; she ended up in the hospital after taking the pills after having a “medical emergency.”
Despite the fact that the abortion was forced, New York governor Kathy Hochul decried the indictment as an attack on women’s rights and stated that New York is a sanctuary state for illegal abortionists. Attorney General Ken Paxton has separately filed a civil suit against the same abortionist; Carpenter, with her powerful political protectors, does not need to be worried about the fact that her abortion pills were forced on a young woman with a wanted baby and put her in the hospital. That is, as long as she stays out of Texas and Louisiana.
