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fetal personhood
Alarm as 'Legal Terrorist' Helps Texan Sue Dr. Over Girlfriend's Abortion Pills
The high-profile lawyer behind the case "wants to shut down doctors in shield law states," said one expert, and "he wants a federal court to weigh in on the Comstock Act."
Jul 24, 2025
As polling reaffirms U.S. public support for abortion rights, a new case in Texas is generating alarm and outrage, as it involves a federal "zombie law" that the forced birth movement aims to use to block people across the country from accessing abortion pills.
Jonathan Mitchell is serving as lead counsel in the proposed class action lawsuit, filed Sunday in the Southern District of Texas. Described as an "anti-abortion legal terrorist" by Susan Rinkunas in Jezebel, Mitchell is Texas' former solicitor general and the chief architect of a state law that entices anti-choice vigilantes with $10,000 bounties to enforce a six-week abortion ban.
"He's represented at least three other men who've sued over women's abortions—including Marcus Silva, who sued his ex-wife's friends for helping her get abortion pills. That case was eventually dropped, but not before it came out that Silva tried to use the lawsuit to blackmail his ex into having sex with him," Jessica Valenti noted in her Abortion, Everyday newsletter. "Since then, Mitchell and other anti-abortion activists have been cozying up to men's rights groups, 'abortion recovery' ministries, and crisis pregnancy centers—on the lookout for more angry men eager to sue their partners or exes for ending a pregnancy."
In the new wrongful death case in Texas, Mitchell represents Jerry Rodriguez, who is suing Rémy Coeytaux, a California doctor accused of mailing to Galveston County medication that his girlfriend used to end her pregnancy last September. The complaint claims the girlfriend's estranged husband and mother "pressured her to kill the baby with the drugs obtained from Coeytaux."
The complaint also claims the girlfriend ended a second pregnancy with "pills that were illegally obtained" in January—and she is now two months into a third pregnancy, and Rodriguez believes she may seek another medication abortion. He asked for $75,000 in damages and "an injunction to stop Coeytaux from distributing abortion-inducing drugs in violation of state or federal law."
The new "wrongful death" abortion pill lawsuit out of Texas is a BFD for several reasons, but one twist is that the doctor being targeted is the brother of lifelong reproductive health advocate Francine Coeytaux of @plancpills.bsky.social Collab by Nina Martin & me on what the case is all about:
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— Madison Pauly (@msjpauly.bsky.social) July 23, 2025 at 5:25 PM
Among the legislation cited in the filing is the Comstock Act, or 18 U.S. Code § 1461, a dormant 1873 law that criminalized the shipping of "obscene" materials, including abortifacients. While some anti-choice advocates aim to outlaw abortion nationwide with legislation in Congress, Mitchell has said that "we don't need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books."
Since the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority reversed Roe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization in 2022, Republican lawmakers have ramped up their efforts to restrict abortion rights within their states—with deadly consequences. Residents of those parts of the country have increasingly turned to telehealth. States with pro-choice policymakers have enacted "shield laws" to protect abortion providers and patients who are traveling or receiving care online.
"These anti-abortion folks are really upset that all these pills are being sent to their states, and they're doing whatever they can to try to stop it," Jill Wieber Lens, a University of Iowa College of Law professor and reproductive rights expert, told Jezebel.
Lens also framed the Texas case as a fear tactic. "I think so much of this is about the chilling effect, as opposed to actually winning this lawsuit," she said. "This might scare other doctors in shield states from wanting to continue what they're doing."
According to Mother Jones, "The case is the first known test of whether abortion opponents can use federal court lawsuits to circumvent state shield laws aimed at protecting providers—a major escalation of attacks on abortion-friendly states."
Mary Ziegler, an abortion historian and law professor at the University of California, Davis, told the outlet that "the whole game for Jonathan Mitchell is to get into federal court... both because he wants to shut down doctors in shield law states, like everyone in the anti-abortion movement, and because he wants a federal court to weigh in on the Comstock Act."
Ziegler added on social media that the suit is also intended to "force a response" from the U.S. Supreme Court and President Donald Trump, who has so far resisted pressure from forced birth activists to use the Comstock Act to ban abortion nationwide. Further, she said, "it reinforces arguments for fetal personhood (note that is a class action on behalf of all 'fathers of unborn children')."
Three years after the fall of Roe v. Wade, most Americans still support legal abortion.-64% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.-80%+ support it in cases of rape, incest, or health risks.-Even after Dobbs, public opinion hasn’t budged; the people are not with the ban.
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— Anna DNP, FNP, BC@ AccessToCareAdvocate (@anna1900.bsky.social) July 24, 2025 at 7:33 AM
The case comes as Thursday polling from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that 64% of U.S. adults across the political spectrum say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
While 52% of all respondents agreed abortion should be allowed if the patient does not want to be pregnant "for any reason," large majorities believe it should be allowed if the pregnant person's health is seriously endangered (89%), the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest (86%), and an abnormality would prevent the fetus from surviving outside of the womb (85%).
Additionally, according to the poll, a majority of Americans support protecting abortion access for people who endure miscarriages or other pregnancy-related emergencies (69%), protecting a patient's right to obtain care in another state (56%), and protecting doctors from fines or prison time (55%).
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Trump's Anti-Trans Order Could Pave Way for National Abortion Ban
"They are going to try to sneak in that fetal personhood language anywhere they can, anywhere and everywhere," said advocate and author Jessica Valenti.
Jan 23, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance have insisted that the White House would not sign a nationwide abortion ban—despite the latter's expression of support for one as recently as 2022—but an unrelated executive order Trump signed this week may put the country on the path to outlawing abortion care without the president needing to sign any legislation into law.
Reproductive rights advocates including author Jessica Valenti noticed shortly after Trump signed an executive order stating the government will not recognize transgender people that the document included language that was unmistakably linked to the right-wing push for "fetal personhood" laws.
"'Female' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the large reproductive cell," reads the executive order signed on Monday. "'Male' means a person belonging, at conception, to the sex that produces the small reproductive cell."
Aside from the fact that the order suggests the Trump administration will recognize everyone born in the United States as a female—because in the first weeks after conception, explained one 2001 scientific paper, "fetal genitalia are the same and are phenotypically female"—the document claims that a fetus is a "person" from the moment of conception.
"And so it begins," said Valenti after the executive order was issued. "They are going to try to sneak in that fetal personhood language anywhere they can, anywhere and everywhere."
The order's language is in line with the Republican Party's 2024 platform, which did not call for a nationwide abortion ban but expressed support for states that would establish fetal personhood by extending the protections of the 14th Amendment, which guarantees that "no person can be denied life or liberty without due process," to fetuses.
The Texas Republican Party last year asserted in its platform that "abortion is not healthcare, it is homicide," and said the party would push to extend "equal protection of the laws to all preborn children from the moment of fertilization."
Rights advocates have warned that adoption of the fetal personhood doctrine at the national level could ultimately lead to the prosecution of pregnant people who obtain abortion care—something anti-abortion groups have long claimed they wouldn't support.
When the national GOP platform was released last August, Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern said its language suggested that "the GOP has recognized that this task is too unpopular to enact democratically, so they're outsourcing it to the federal courts."
"Fetal personhood means a nationwide abortion ban imposed by judicial fiat," said Stern.
Anti-abortion advocates aim to ultimately bring fetal personhood to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping the right-wing majority would rule that the 14th Amendment applies to fetuses from the moment of conception.
Including a reference to fetal personhood in an unrelated executive order is "an intentional way to continue to normalize the idea that embryos are people," Dana Sussman, senior vice president of Pregnancy Justice, told The Guardian.
"This is yet another attempt to codify it in one form or another," said Sussman.
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This November, Women Will Remember Who Took Away Their Rights
Women—both those who want abortion to be legal and those who want to become pregnant through in-vitro fertilization—are furious.
Mar 01, 2024
It’s 2024, but it feels like we’re back in 1991 this Women’s History Month.
Back then, President George H.W. Bush was following in the footsteps of his predecessor Ronald Reagan by continuing to appoint conservative judges to the federal bench, and Roe v. Wade was expected to fall.
Radical anti-abortion activism had gained prominence and strength. Popular media was awash with stories pushing the myth that women were dissatisfied and unhappy—and feminist ideals of women’s empowerment were to blame.
Then a blockbuster book hit the streets: Backlash by Susan Faludi.
There’s a new backlash, all right—but this time it’s not against women’s progress, but against the loss of women’s rights and their own personhood.
It came out just as the legal notion of “fetal personhood” was taking shape. Among other things, the book captured the horror of giving a fetus, even a hypothetical potential fetus, precedence over an actual living person. Backlash posited that any so-called women’s unhappiness was not the fault of feminism, but the fact that the struggle for equality was far from finished.
Faludi anticipated by over 20 years the deadly choices that women and their doctors are now being forced to make in a post-Roe world.
She was distressed at the prospect of backward momentum—of a world that treated women as vessels for childbearing above all. “What unites women is the blatant, ugly evidence of oppression,” she said at the time, “that will come with the inevitable demise of Roe vs. Wade.”
Faludi was right. There’s a new backlash, all right—but this time it’s not against women’s progress, but against the loss of women’s rights and their own personhood. Since Roe was overturned, at least three states have blocked new abortion bans, and 16 more have strengthened existing pro-statutes with new protections.
Safeguarding women’s autonomy was also front and center in last November’s midterm elections.
Ohio was the epicenter. Advocates put forth a bold ballot question on whether to amend the state constitution affirming the right of individuals to make their own reproductive health decisions—including abortion. The outcome? No contest. Voters opted to enshrine abortion rights by a margin of 57-43%.
Abortion was also on the ballot indirectly in Virginia. Anti-choice governor Glen Youngkin was pushing voters to flip the state Senate to Republicans while keeping the Republican majority in the House of Delegates.
That would have allowed the governor and his lackeys in the legislature to pass a 15-week abortion ban. That grand plan went down in flames—pro-choicers took full control of both houses of the General Assembly after two years of divided power.
The latest trend in the reproduction wars comes from Alabama. Another attack on women’s rights to self determination—but this time from the other end of the argument.
In a first-of-its-kind ruling, Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children and anyone who destroys them can be held liable for wrongful death. At several facilities in the state, the decision has virtually stopped in-vitro fertilization in its tracks for women who are trying to conceive.
It’s reminiscent of struggles of the past. It took nearly a century and a half after independence for women to win the constitutional right to vote in 1919. Winning abortion rights took even longer—until 1973, when Roe guaranteed it under the 14th Amendment. But that ruling lasted only 49 years. One step forward, two steps back.
Women—both those who want abortion to be legal and those who want to become pregnant through in-vitro fertilization—are furious.
The upshot? Women are the majority of the population, the majority of registered voters, and the majority of those who actually show up at the polls. It’s a good bet they’ll remember in November.
Hell hath no fury like a woman deprived of her basic rights.
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