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mifepristone
Texas House Passes Attack on Mailed Abortion Pills That 'Will Fuel Fear' Nationwide
"Texas: Land of the free! Also Texas: We want you to surveil your neighbor, see if they've missed their period, snoop through their trash and mail, and sue whoever sent them medication abortion."
Aug 29, 2025
Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives on Thursday night advanced another anti-abortion bounty hunter bill, this one taking aim at medications mailed from states that support reproductive freedom so Texans can choose to end pregnancies.
House Bill 7 passed 82-48 along party lines during Texas' second special legislative session of the year. The proposal from state Rep. Jeff Leach (R-67) still needs approval from the Senate—which previously passed similar legislation—before it heads to the desk of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. He has signed various attacks on reproductive rights, including Senate Bill 8, a 2021 state law that entices vigilantes with $10,000 bounties to enforce a six-week abortion ban.
Like S.B. 8, the new bill relies on lawsuits filed by private citizens. H.B. 7 would empower them to sue out-of-state healthcare providers, medication manufacturers, and anyone who mails or otherwise provides abortion pills to someone in the state for up to $100,000 in damages per violation—even if no abortion occurs. Under pressure from some anti-choice groups, Republicans added language allowing vigilantes to keep only $10,000; the rest would go to a charity they choose.
"It's designed to trap Texans into forced pregnancy," Shellie Hayes-McMahon, executive director of Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, told the Houston Chronicle. "Instead of fixing the crisis they (Texas lawmakers) manufactured, they're doubling down to punish anyone who dares to help a Texan. This bill is not about safety, it's about control."
Republicans in the Texas House have introduced another way to try to harm patients, providers, and manufacturers in the state. HB 7 would allow anyone to sue a manufacturer, distributor, or provider of medication abortion—even without proof of care being provided.
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— Reproductive Freedom for All (@reproductivefreedomforall.org) August 29, 2025 at 10:34 AM
The bill is part of a broader effort to stop the flow of abortion medications—mifepristone and misoprostol—into states that have ramped up restrictions in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority reversing Roe v. Wade in 2022.
As GOP lawmakers have worked to further restrict reproductive freedom, Democrat-controlled states have enacted "shield laws" to protect doctors and patients. Laws enabling telehealth abortions are key targets for Republican officials and far-right activists—including "anti-abortion legal terrorist" Jonathan Mitchell, the chief architect of S.B. 8 who's now representing a Texas man in a wrongful death case against a California doctor accused of providing pills that his girlfriend used to end her pregnancy.
The New York Times reported that "supporters hope and opponents fear" H.B. 7 "will serve as a model for other states to limit medication abortion by promoting a rash of lawsuits against medical providers, pharmaceutical companies, and companies such as FedEx or UPS that may ship the drugs."
Supporters and opponents also anticipate court battles over the bill itself. "Texas is sort of the tip of the spear," Marc Hearron, the associate director of litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the Times. "It's setting up a clash."
H.B. 7 is "pushing up against the limits of how much a state can control," Hearron added. "Each state can have its own laws, but throughout our history, we have been able to travel across the country, send things across the country."
Texas: Land of the free! Also Texas: We want you to surveil your neighbor, see if they've missed their period, snoop through their trash and mail, and sue whoever sent them medication abortion. https://bit.ly/4lM2sXF
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— Center for Reproductive Rights (@reprorights.org) August 28, 2025 at 4:45 PM
After Thursday's vote, Blair Wallace, policy and advocacy strategist on reproductive freedom at the ACLU of Texas, warned in a statement that "H.B. 7 exports Texas' extreme abortion ban far beyond state borders."
"It will fuel fear among manufacturers and providers nationwide, while encouraging neighbors to police one another's reproductive lives, further isolating pregnant Texans, and punishing the people who care for them," she said. "We believe in a Texas where people have the freedom to make decisions about our own bodies and futures."
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GOP AGs Urge Congress to Crack Down on Shield Laws and Telehealth Abortions
The Republican coalition targeted California and New York, both home to doctors who have been targeted by legal cases for allegedly providing abortion pills to patients in states with strict bans.
Jul 30, 2025
While a recently filed lawsuit in Texas jeopardizes the future of telehealth abortions, some Republican state attorneys general don't want the GOP-controlled Congress to wait for the results of that case, and this week urged leaders on Capitol Hill to consider passing federal legislation that would restrict doctors from shipping pills to patients to end their pregnancies.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority ended nationwide abortion rights with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization three years ago, anti-choice state lawmakers have ramped up efforts to restrict reproductive freedom. At the same time, some Democratic officials have enacted "shield laws" to protect in-state providers and traveling patients.
Led by Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, 16 state AGs on Tuesday wrote to top congressional leaders from both parties, calling on them to "assess the constitutional authority it may have to preempt shield laws."
Griffin also sent cease-and-desist letters to two entities shipping abortion medication within the United States and two website companies that provide services to LifeOnEasyPills.org. Reporting on the AG's press conference, South Carolina Daily Gazette noted that "if the entities don't cease advertising abortion pills in Arkansas, Griffin said his office may bring a lawsuit against them for violating the state's deceptive trade practices law."
While Griffin also "said he believes what he is asking lawmakers to do is different from a federal abortion ban that the closely divided Congress has seemed hesitant to tackle," according to the Daily Gazette, advocates for reproductive rights disagreed.
Responding to the letter to Congress on social media, the advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All shared a petition opposing a national abortion ban. It says that Republican President Donald Trump "has proven time and time again that he is out of touch with the 8 in 10 Americans who support protecting abortion rights."
"On the campaign trail he spewed whatever lies he could to get him reelected. Now he'll use the Project 2025 playbook to further restrict our right to access abortion, contraception, fertility treatments, and more," the petition warns. "We must stop him."
Yesterday, 16 Republican attorneys general sent a letter to congressional leadership urging them to override state telemedicine abortion shield laws.Sign the petition below to stand up to Republican lawmakers!act.reproductivefreedomforall.org/a/no-nationa...
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— Reproductive Freedom for All (@reproductivefreedomforall.org) July 30, 2025 at 3:48 PM
In addition to Griffin, the Tuesday letter is signed by the attorneys general of Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The GOP coalition targeted two states, arguing that "when New York or California refuses to respect a criminal prosecution or a civil judgment against an individual who is accused of violating the abortion laws of another state, they are refusing to give full faith and credit to that state's judicial proceedings."
Last December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against a provider in New York. He sued Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT), for providing two drugs used in medication abortions—mifepristone and misoprostol—to a 20-year-old resident of Collin County.
In February, on the same day that Texas State District Judge Bryan Gantt ordered Carpenter to pay over $100,000 in fines and fees, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill sought to extradite the ACT doctor. Her state classifies mifepristone and misoprostol as dangerous controlled substances.
While Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed the extradition warrant sought by Murrill and the district attorney, New York is one of nearly two dozen states with shield laws for reproductive healthcare, and its Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, said that "I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana—not now, not ever."
On Monday, Paxton took legal action against Taylor Brucka, the clerk in Ulster County, New York, for refusing to make Carpenter pay the $100,000 penalty. Bruck told The Guardian that "it's really unprecedented for a clerk to be in this position" and "I'm just proud to live in a state that has something like the shield law here to protect our healthcare providers from out-of-state proceedings like this."
Meanwhile, another case involving a California doctor emerged in Texas earlier this month: A man filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Dr. Rémy Coeytaux for allegedly mailing to Galveston County medication that his girlfriend used to end her pregnancy. His lawyer is Jonathan Mitchell, an "anti-abortion legal terrorist" who previously served as the state's solicitor general and was the chief architect of its law that entices anti-choice vigilantes with $10,000 bounties to enforce a six-week ban.
Mary Ziegler, an abortion historian and law professor at the University of California, Davis, recently told Mother Jones 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," a dormant 1873 law that criminalized the shipping of "obscene" materials, including abortifacients.
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In a Post-Roe America, Knowledge Isn’t Just Power—It’s Survival
This is a critical moment in history for both patients and physicians alike to stay informed—because the moves happening now could reshape access to reproductive healthcare nationwide.
Jul 02, 2025
Three years ago, I remember exactly where I was when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. My stomach sank. As an OB/GYN PA with more than a decade in reproductive care, I knew this wasn’t just devastating—it was going to reshape the healthcare landscape completely.
The conversations I’d been having with patients for years—about abortion, birth control, miscarriage, pregnancy loss, pain—were about to get harder, more complicated, and more dangerous.
I had the honor of joining over 100 incredible storytellers in Washington, D.C. for the Our Voices, Our Stories, Our Future: Free & Just Storyteller Summit, to mark three years since the deadly Dobbs decision.
In emergencies, minutes matter. I’ve been in those rooms. And I can tell you: When someone is crashing in front of you, the last thing you should be doing is calling legal.
I am still in awe of the number of people who were courageous enough to travel from across the country to tell their stories and fight for reproductive freedom. We laughed together, we cried together, and we shared our visions for a better future.
We also came to D.C. to meet with lawmakers to remind them that Dobbs didn’t just overturn Roe: It changed lives.
Although the fall of Roe didn’t end abortion in this country, it made it exponentially harder to access. It made it scarier. It deepened the segregation of healthcare access in America. If you’re wealthy enough to travel for care, you might still be okay. But if you’re not—if you’re young, uninsured, working class, Black, or Brown—you’re at greater risk. And we know abortion bans lead to higher maternal mortality, especially for Black women.
Let’s be clear: The anti-abortion zealots behind Dobbs were never going to stop there. In the three years since, I’ve watched extremists celebrate it as a win for “states’ rights,” while women are forced to flee their home states for basic care. “Leaving it to the states” doesn’t mean freedom. It means chaos. It means harm. It means people die.
That’s not an exaggeration—that’s reality.
And President Donald Trump? He doesn’t need to sign a national abortion ban to wreak havoc. He and his allies are already gutting protections through rollbacks, legal loopholes, and silence where there should be leadership.
Recently, Trump’s Supreme Court ruled that states can block people relying on Medicaid from choosing Planned Parenthood as their trusted healthcare provider, a devastating blow to abortion rights and reproductive healthcare—specifically, the freedom of millions of people who use Medicaid to choose Planned Parenthood as their healthcare provider.
The court put millions of Americans’ essential right to reproductive care at risk, and it will devastate communities all across the country just so Republicans in Congress can completely gut Medicaid for millions more Americans. Earlier this month, the Trump administration rescinded federal guidance that protected abortion access in emergencies. That guidance made clear what EMTALA—our federal emergency care law—already guarantees: If a pregnant patient shows up to the ER in crisis and needs an abortion to survive, they must get care.
Now that guidance is gone. And providers are left wondering if they’ll be sued—or even arrested—for doing their jobs.
In emergencies, minutes matter. I’ve been in those rooms. And I can tell you: When someone is crashing in front of you, the last thing you should be doing is calling legal.
And now they’ve set their sights on medication abortion—specifically mifepristone. This medication has been safely used by more than 8 million people over the last 20+ years. It’s not only essential for abortion care—it’s critical for miscarriage management too. But extremists don’t care about science, or safety. They care about control.
If they succeed in restricting mifepristone, it won’t just impact abortion access. It will gut miscarriage care. It could force providers to delay or deny treatment. And it could shut down clinics that rely on it to function—clinics already hanging on by a thread.
This is how they win. Not just with bans, but with quiet sabotage. With red tape. With fear. With confusion. With back-handed backdoor restrictions on our rights to bodily autonomy.
This is a critical moment in history for both patients and physicians alike to stay informed—because the moves happening now could reshape access to reproductive healthcare nationwide.
That’s why I started Take Back Trust—because people need more than outrage. They need answers, and they need tools. Patients need to walk into an ER or a clinic and know what to say, what to ask, and what their rights are.
Take Back Trust is a national resource hub helping people navigate this broken system. Whether you’re facing a miscarriage, scheduling a birth control visit, or trying to figure out if your state still protects you—we’ve got your back.
I am inspired by the words of former Vice President Kamala Harris, who surprised us via video at the Summit. “I know these are difficult times, and it requires a whole lot of courage, and it requires a level of optimism, to remember that we’re fighting for something, not against something,” the former Vice President reminded us. “And in that way we are doing good and important work that is about upholding fundamental rights, such as the freedom of an individual to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do.”
As a clinician, a content creator, and a full-time reproductive rights advocate working at the intersection of medicine and movement, I’ll keep showing up. I’ll keep saying the quiet parts out loud. Because we’re not going back—and we’re not backing down.
We can’t afford to.
Lives are on the line. Not someday, today.
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