Once again, Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney General, is in the news.

He has filed a lawsuit against a New York doctor who prescribed abortion medication to a Texan through telehealth appointments:

In the lawsuit, Paxton accuses Margaret Daley Carpenter, a physician and co-founder of The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT) in New York, of prescribing and mailing abortion medication in a telehealth appointment to a 20-year-old pregnant woman in Collin County, Texas, which then later caused ‘an adverse event’ resulting in a medical abortion. 

The doctor sent the patient two boxes of the abortion pills: mifepristone, which stops the pregnancy from advancing, and misoprostol, which causes cramping and bleeding to empty the uterus of its life growing within. When the patient began to bleed heavily, she asked the father of the unborn child to take her to a hospital in Collin County for treatment. Further details on her condition were not provided.

The doctor had violated two conditions of Texas law: she does not have a medical license in Texas, and she had engaged in telehealth treatment.

It’s clear, too, that medical doctors who approve of abortions are disregarding the rule of law in nearly 25 other states that ban or limit abortions. Those states, who enacted a ban or serious limitation to abortion just before or following the overturning of Roe v. Wade are Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, South Carolina, Utah, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, New Hampshire, Alaska, and Ohio.

Some attorneys general will follow in the steps of New York to protect their medical practitioners:

New York passed a law in 2023 granting legal protections to doctors who prescribe medication abortion to patients out-of-state through telemedicine.
‘We will always protect our providers from unjust attempts to punish them for doing their job,’ New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Friday.

Efforts to protect women and their unborn children will continue to be stymied by those people who believe in abortion, who don’t respect the rule of law in other states, and have little regard for the women who go through these procedures.

Medication abortions accounted for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, according to a report released earlier this year by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

In Sweden, a study was just released on the results of medication abortions.

Doctors prefer delaying a medication abortion until an ultrasound is performed, to rule out the risk of an ectopic pregnancy, researchers said. Ultrasound reveals a pregnancy in weeks five to six.

Here is a summary of the results:

For the study, researchers analyzed data on more than 1,500 women at 26 clinics in nine countries who requested an abortion before ultrasound was able to confirm their pregnancy.

These women were randomly assigned to either receive their early medication abortion as requested or have their abortion delayed until pregnancy could be confirmed by ultrasound.

In both groups, more than 95% of women had a complete and successful abortion.

In the delayed treatment group, 4.5% of medication abortions failed and required additional surgery. In the early group, 3% of pregnancies continued and 1.8% of women required surgery for an incomplete abortion.

Overall, 1% of all participants had an ectopic pregnancy, researchers found.

The most interesting factor in these results is how the percentages are reflected in real numbers.

For example, 95% of women had successful abortions, but in the delayed treatment group, 4.5% of the medication abortions “failed and required additional surgeries,” which is equal to 67 women.

And 1.8% required surgery for an incomplete abortion, which equals another 27 women.

So in total, almost 100 women had medication abortions that were not successful. It’s unclear whether their reaction to the medication (when there was excessive bleeding) was life-threatening. And an ectopic pregnancy is a very serious condition, although only 15 people were affected.

But the issues are even greater than those listed here: people will continue to fight for the right to kill babies, no matter what legal limitations are put in place; at least eight states have provided legal protection (shield laws) to protect medical practitioners who prescribe the drugs to out-of-state patients; the Supreme Court ruled against a group of anti-abortion doctors due to lack of legal standing to sue when they tried to have the F.D.A. rescind its approval of mifepristone.

When we wade our way through all the politics and game-playing, and if people would simply contemplate the seriousness of the issue for all concerned, maybe we will make some headway in protecting women and their children.

Until then, abortion doctors will fight for their right to kill babies, and we can only do our level-best to stop them.
 

Image: Pixabay / Pixabay License