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jonathan mitchell
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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The Federal Abortion Ban Plan Team Trump Doesn't Want You to Know About
"I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election," said an attorney tied to Trump.
Feb 20, 2024
The architect of a Texas law that entices anti-choice vigilantes with $10,000 bounties supposedly wants former President Donald Trump and his allies to shut up about abortion until after the November presidential election—when right-wingers hope to implement "legally sophisticated" and unpopular forced-pregnancy policies.
After reporting on Friday that Trump "likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban" with exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the pregnant person, The New York Times revealed on Saturday that lawyers and strategists in his "orbit" are crafting more complex plans.
"We don't need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books," attorney Jonathan Mitchell told the Times, referring to a dormant 1873 law heralded by an "anti-vice" crusader that criminalized the shipping of various "obscene" materials, including abortifacients. "There's a smorgasbord of options."
"I hope he doesn't know about the existence of Comstock, because I just don't want him to shoot off his mouth," the lawyer added of Trump. "I think the pro-life groups should keep their mouths shut as much as possible until the election."
Mitchell appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month to argue against an effort to remove Trump from Colorado's Republican primary ballot. He previously worked on the Texas vigilante law designed to circumvent Roe v. Wade, the historic abortion rights ruling that the justices—including three Trump appointees—overturned with their June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.
Calling the existence of the law and its implications "perhaps the worst-kept secret of the post-Dobbs era," The New Republic's Melissa Gira Grant detailed recent coverage of the Comstock Act on Tuesday:
In recent months, numerous opinion pieces from leading experts on abortion, history, and the law, such as law professors David S. Cohen, Greer Donley, Rachel Rebouché, and Mary Ziegler, have warned of these specific plans. There were several at CNN and in the Times itself, and in Teen Vogue and The Atlantic, among others. They follow a trickle of reporting stretching back to the Dobbs decision outlining what legal threats lay on the other side of Roe. Reporters in Texas and reproductive rights reporters have been at the forefront of laying out the Comstock plan and its risks. "I knew about Comstock before Dobbs, but I wanted to say nothing about it," Jonathan Mitchell told Amy Littlefield at The Nation, in a story published in April 2023.
That same month, as a legal challenge to medication abortion amped up the Comstock threat, Susan Rinkunas at Jezebel warned, "Congress Needs to Repeal This Zombie 1873 Abortion Ban Before It Blows Up in Our Faces." Today we are no closer to that possibility, even as someone like Mitchell has become more explicit. The only thing he may be nervous about is more people paying attention. The idea that Trump can be kept in the dark until after the election is not unbelievable, but more likely is that Mitchell is hoping to make the Comstock plan sound that much more far-fetched with his "Oh no, please don't put this in the paper" feint this week.
Noting Mitchell's new comments in a piece for Jezebel on Monday, Rinkunas reiterated to Democrats on Capitol Hill that "now would be a great time for you to repeal this zombie ban once and for all."
Since
Dobbs, Democratic governors and legislators have worked to protect abortion rights for their constituents and "healthcare refugees" from states where GOP officials have ramped up fights for forced-pregnancy laws. Many of the bans or restrictions recently approved in over 20 states are being challenged in courts that GOP governors and Trump pushed to the right.
At the national level, GOP attorneys and strategists now propose bypassing Congress and "leveraging the regulatory powers of federal institutions," including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to enact anti-abortion policies that "could be stopped only by courts that the first Trump administration had already stacked with conservative judges," according to the Times.
"Policies under consideration include banning the use of fetal stem cells in medical research for diseases like cancer, rescinding approval of abortion pills at the FDA, and stopping hundreds of millions in federal funding for Planned Parenthood," the newspaper noted. "Such an action against Planned Parenthood would cripple the nation's largest provider of women's healthcare, which is already struggling to provide abortions in the post-Roe era."
Planned Parenthood and other groups and experts who support abortion rights have been strongly advocating for Democratic President Joe Biden's reelection—and renewed their warnings about Trump's return to the White House in response to the Times reporting.
Quoting from the article, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California president and CEO Jodi Hicks
said on social media Saturday: "They 'are planning ways to restrict abortion rights if he returns to power that would go far beyond proposals for a national ban...' The only thing stopping them from taking your freedom is your VOTE."
Planned Parenthood Texas Votes senior adviser Wendy Davis, a former Democratic state senator,
warned that "as bad as things are now, believe me when I say they'll get much, much worse if we don't do everything we can to win in November—at every level on the ballot."
Reproductive Freedom for All president Mini Timmaraju told the Times that Trump is "trying to masquerade in public as a moderate," but if the likely Republican nominee is elected in November, "he's going to do whatever Jonathan Mitchell wants."
Praising the paper's "deep dive" on social media, Timmaraju
added that "maybe the most chilling is how confident they are that he can do the most damage in a second term, without Congress, and with judges he appointed."
Biden has come under
fire for recent remarks on abortion as well as his administration's support for Israel's war on the Gaza Strip, which has created a maternal healthcare crisis and outraged some "current Planned Parenthood employees, legal experts, nurse midwives, abortion fund workers, and clinic staffers" interviewed by HuffPost.
Still, surely aware of
polling that shows abortion bans are deeply unpopular with the American public, the Biden campaign has highlighted his support for reproductive rights on the campaign trail—including with statements from the president and abortion rights advocates about the Times articles and a new Politico piece on Trump and Christian nationalism.
While the ACLU does not endorse candidates, the group's chief advocacy and political officer, Deirdre Schifeling, stressed in a statement that Trump and "anti-abortion extremists at all levels will stop at nothing until our rights are stripped away."
"The majority of Americans strongly support abortion rights. We must elect leaders this year who reflect our values and push to restore abortion access in every state across the country," she added. "The only way we can stop extreme bans is to elect a president, and a House and Senate, that will pass federal legislation to protect abortion rights and reproductive freedom—voters deserve nothing less."
This post has been updated to note that the ACLU does not endorse candidates.
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