How Safe are Abortion Providers in Blue States?

Darling Meteor readers,

Way back in February, I started baking my own bread at home because the closest supermarket was charging $6 a boule, and that just felt criminal. I swore up, down, and around, however, that I would not do sourdough—too complicated.

I’m sure you see where this is going. I’m now two days into making my own sourdough starter and this gloopy substance has become my fourth child (after my two dogs and one human). If any of you bread masters have guidance, step forward.

In today’s newsletter, we’re untangling the complexities of an anti-abortion lawsuit out of Texas. Plus, some updates in the sports world.

My starter runneth over,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

The abortion battle to come: Last week, as you may have heard, the state of Texas filed a lawsuit against Margaret Daley Carpenter, M.D., a New York-based doctor and co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, alleging that Dr. Carpenter had mailed abortion pills to a patient in Texas. Texas, of course, has a total abortion ban, but New York has a “shield law” meant to protect doctors who help out-of-state patients. Which law supersedes the other?

Well, it’s complicated.

The shield law protects providers from out-of-state criminal investigations or prosecution (among other things). But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is not pursuing a criminal case against Dr. Carpenter; instead, he wants to hit her with a $250,000 fine for practicing medicine without a Texas license and violating the state’s abortion ban.

The New York shield law does address civil liability protection—specifically, it gives doctors a right to “protection against application of another state’s law in New York State court” and a “claw back lawsuit” option to reclaim any monetary damages incurred while fighting a charge brought for providing healthcare that is lawful in New York. But the suit is being filed in Texas, meaning that that first provision may not help Dr. Carpenter if this goes to trial. Texas’ legal code also states that a doctor cannot provide telehealth services to Texas residents without a license to practice medicine in the state. So, on the surface, it would seem that Texas has a slam dunk on its hands.

Not entirely. Even if Texas wins the suit, experts don’t see a clear path for the state to enforce the judgment. But it’s not just about the money. There’s a wrinkle in this case that gives a hint of Paxton’s long game: Texas’s petition includes details about the man who impregnated the patient (we’ll call him John Doe). According to the petition, he only found out she was pregnant after he had driven her to the hospital to treat severe bleeding. Upon being told she had been nine weeks pregnant, John Doe “concluded” that the woman “intentionally withheld information from him regarding her pregnancy” and assumed she had done something to abort the pregnancy. He returned to the woman’s residence and found packaging for mifepristone and misoprostol.

As law professor Mary Ziegler explains in Slate, this first-of-its-kind lawsuit may be trying to lay the groundwork for more cases involving male partners:

Paxton might like his odds when this case lands, sooner or later, before the high court. But this is the beginning of a much bigger push to end interstate access to abortion that focuses on men like the one at the center of this case. Texas Right to Life and other anti-abortion groups looking for plaintiffs to bring lawsuits in the new year have focused on male partners of abortion seekers, who they hope will bring suits for wrongful death.

Are you following? Anti-abortion groups hope that men will sue over the “wrongful death” of fetuses they had a hand in creating. And in repeatedly referring to John Doe as the “biological father of the unborn child,” Texas may be trying to establish a legal precedent for those rights.

To be clear, it’s not specified in the petition whether or not John Doe himself turned his partner in; he’s also not filing a wrongful death suit, and in the event Dr. Carpenter is made to pay a fine, John Doe would not be legally entitled to any of it. Still, a win here could signal to anti-abortion men that they now have the power to do something to gum up the works of telemedicine by telling Big Brother what their girlfriends are getting in the mail.

And that will cost doctors, patients, and pregnant people in need a lot more than $250,000.

AND:

• During one of a series of raids in Gaza on Sunday night, the Israeli military killed Ahmed Al-Louh, a Palestinian journalist who now joins the horrifyingly long list of nearly 200 journalists killed in Gaza since last October. Another reporter speaking on recovery efforts from the same raid revealed that Palestinians have “run out of body bags to bury the dead” and are using “any piece of clothing or blanket” for burials.

• Last Wednesday, student loan borrowers aged 50 and older gathered in front of the Department of Education to stage a Knit-In for Debt Cancellation. The event, organized by the Debt Collective, was asking that President Biden cancel student loan debts for all Americans over 50 before he leaves office. Older borrowers account for about $1.25 billion of the total student loan debt in this country.

IMAGE VIA THE DEBT COLLECTIVE INSTAGRAM (PHOTO BY JULIAN THOMAS) 

• The push to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment is heating up in the last days of the Biden administration. More than 120 House Democrats sent a letter to President Biden yesterday urging him to ratify the ERA, a move that comes on the heels of 46 senators sending a similar letter in November. (The ERA satisfied constitutional requirements after Virginia became the 38th state to ratify it in 2020, but hasn’t been added because not enough states met the 1982 ratification deadline. Also, Phyllis Schlafly was awful, but we digress.) Today, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand suggested in a memo that Biden could simply direct the archivist of the United States, Dr. Colleen Shogan, to certify and publish the amendment; Shogan and her deputy quickly replied that no, they won’t be doing anything without Congress. Any attempt to bypass Congress is guaranteed to result in legal battles, but Rep. Cori Bush, who is helping lead this latest effort in the last weeks of her term, is undeterred: “Let’s just do the right thing, and then we’ll fight,” she told the Washington Post.

• You’ve probably read that some of the biggest organizations in the country—including Amazon, OpenAI, Meta, and their CEOs—have promised major donations to Trump’s inauguration. The New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg has a name for this: “the great capitulation.” “Collectively, all these elite decisions to bow to Trump make it feel like the air is going out of the old liberal order. In its place will be something more ruthless and Nietzschean,” Goldberg writes. Who knew inaugurations cost this much money and ass-kissing?

• 🚨New word alert🚨 What is “petro-masculinity?” It’s a term coined by Professor Cara Daggett in 2018 that feels particularly relevant now. It refers to the frightening intersection of misogyny and climate change denialism—two things expected to be on the rise during the next administration—and how “fossil fuels have become wrapped up in the American identity.”

LOCKER ROOM TALK 🏀 🏀 ⚽

A fun safe space for our fellow women’s sports fanatics 

• On Saturday, the Tennessee Lady Vols made history by hitting 30 three-pointers in a single game against North Carolina Central. This is the first time a team has ever done that in NCAA, WNBA, or NBA history.

• Today, two-time World Cup champion Becky Sauerbrunn announced her retirement from professional soccer. While she will be praised for her many accomplishments on the pitch, her greatest contribution to the beautiful game was her unyielding fight for equal pay for the US Women’s National Team.

• The WNBA will hold its first-ever regular-season international game this summer in Vancouver! Sorry to all the Torontonians who wanted that game, but y’all are getting your own team, so be cool with sharing.

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