Legal professional Common Ken Paxton on Tuesday sued an out-of-state supplier of abortion-inducing drugs and a California physician below a brand new state regulation designed for abortion pill-related fits, weeks after an identical personal swimsuit was filed towards the identical physician.
Support Entry is an nonprofit telehealth group centered on offering abortion-inducing drugs to ladies throughout america, together with in locations the place abortions are unlawful, like Texas. Paxton’s swimsuit names the corporate, its founder Dr. Rebecca Gomperts and Dr. Remy Coeytaux of California as a part of a “rising community of out-of-state abortion traffickers that intentionally goal Texas residents.”
Filed in Galveston County District Courtroom, the swimsuit cites new statutes within the state’s well being and security code created by Home Invoice 7, which bars the creation and distribution of abortion-inducing medicine in Texas. The regulation, which went into impact Dec. 4, permits personal residents to sue anybody who manufactures, distributes, mails or gives abortion treatment to or from the state for as much as $100,000.
“My workplace will defend the lives of the unborn and relentlessly implement our state’s pro-life legal guidelines towards Support Entry and different radicals prefer it,” Paxton stated in a press launch concerning the swimsuit.
The swimsuit additionally claims Gomberts and Coeytaux illegally carried out abortions and not using a Texas doctor’s license. The swimsuit seeks a brief restraining order and injunction towards Support Entry to stop it from offering further treatment to others within the state.
On Feb. 1, Jerry Rodriguez of Galveston County filed a lawsuit towards Coeytaux for allegedly offering abortion-inducing drugs to his companion. Rodriguez’s swimsuit, which accuses Coeytaux of offering his girlfriend with abortion drugs on the route of her ex-husband, was the primary time HB 7 was cited in a lawsuit.
Rodriguez filed the unique lawsuitin July, alleging the lady’s ex-husband ordered the abortion drugs from Coeytaux. Subsequently, Rodriguez’s girlfriend took the drugs and terminated a being pregnant on Sept.19, 2024, and one other being pregnant in January 2025. Rodriguez claims within the lawsuit that he was the daddy in these pregnancies.
Rodriguez, by way of his lawyer Jonathan Mitchell, who helped design Texas’ abortion ban, up to date the lawsuit in early February, largely stating the identical allegations towards Coeytaux. Nevertheless, this time, Mitchell included HB 7 as a further software to compel Coeytaux to pay $75,000 in minimal damages, plus different charges, Rodriguez is asking for and to cease prescribing or offering abortion-inducing medicine in Texas.
HB 7’s opponents have referred to as it a “bounty hunter regulation” as a result of profitable plaintiffs could be awarded a minimum of $100,000 in damages. If the plaintiff is just not instantly associated to the fetus, they’d solely be entitled to 10% and must give the remaining cash to a charity of their selecting. Ladies taking abortion drugs wouldn’t be eligible to be sued below the invoice, nor would ladies who take them after miscarriages.
“If discovery reveals that Coeytaux has mailed, transported, delivered, prescribed, or supplied any abortion-inducing drug to any individual or location in Texas since HB 7 took impact on December 4, 2025, then Mr. Rodriguez will search to recuperate a minimum of $100,000.00 for every of these statutory violations,” Mitchell stated within the up to date lawsuit.
The Middle for Reproductive Rights, which is representing Coeytaux, launched a press release condemning the lawsuit as a strategic assault to additional implement laws that undermine the alternatives ladies make about their physique.
“This regulation goes towards every part Texans worth. It’s anti-freedom, anti-privacy, and anti-family,” stated Marc Hearron, affiliate litigation director on the Middle for Reproductive Rights, within the information launch. “However these lawmakers are relentless of their makes an attempt to scare medical doctors and sufferers from prescribing and accessing abortion drugs – precisely as a result of they’re so secure, efficient, and broadly used throughout america.”
The usage of abortion drugs have skyrocketed after the overturn of Roe v. Wade.
There have been estimates that as many as 19,000 orders for abortion drugs from Texans had been positioned after Texas’ preliminary abortion ban was enacted. After Texas banned abortion, many turned to on-line pharmacies and out-of-state suppliers to acquire treatment to terminate their pregnancies regardless of the bans.
Texas is amongst states main on the crackdown of abortion drugs. In December, Texas joined Florida in suing the Federal Drug Administration over the company’s approval of mifepristone, a drug generally prescribed to terminate pregnancies.
Darcy Caballero, authorities relations & political director of Deliberate Parenthood Texas Votes, stated a number of the ladies most impacted by this regulation are these dealing with deadly fetal diagnoses.
“They’re now having to face an actual troublesome alternative of both going by way of with a labor that they know is just not viable or have to depart the state to get the care that they want as a result of in any other case the state goes to make it hostile for anybody to assist them,” Caballero stated.
The most recent lawsuit raises related authorized questions which have popped up in different Texas lawsuits towards out-of-state abortion capsule suppliers, specifically associated as to whether their state’s protect legal guidelines can defend them from Texas’ challenges.
Texas has previouslysued two out-of-state abortion capsule suppliers in New York and Delaware for violating Texas’ abortion legal guidelines, however New York and Delaware have protect legal guidelines which defend medical suppliers from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions. Whereas the Delaware lawsuit was filed in January, a New York choose dismissed Texas’ case in October.
California has related protect legal guidelines, which may additionally defend Coeytaux, authorized specialists have stated.
California’s protect regulation may additionally enable Coeytaux to countersue Rodriguez, however in Sunday’s replace, Mitchell identified language that Texas lawmakers wrote into HB 7 that forestalls such counteractions.
Rodriguez’s lawsuit additionally alleges Coeytaux is in violation of the Comstock Act, an 18th Century anti-obscenity regulation. The Comstock Act has not been enforced for greater than 100 years, with some authorized specialists arguing it’s solely unenforceable because of this, whereas others, together with Mitchell, argue it may be used to federally criminalize mailing abortion drugs.
Mitchell and HB 7’s creator Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, didn’t return requests for remark.
This text first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
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Legal guidelines embrace proscribing transgender folks’s entry to public bogs, permitting lawsuits towards abortion capsule suppliers, and substitute of the STAAR check.
HB 7, which handed the Legislature this month, permits personal residents to sue abortion capsule suppliers and producers, mirroring a 2021 regulation that permits personal enforcement of abortion bans.
