Texas antiabortion politicians have made one thing clear: Their ban was never meant to stop at the Texas border.
On Feb. 1, 2026, Dr. Remy Coeytaux of California became the first person to be sued in federal court under Texas’ newly enacted House Bill 7 (HB 7), a bounty-hunter law that invites private citizens to file civil suits against anyone who manufactures, distributes, mails or provides abortion medication to women in Texas. It carries a minimum penalty of $100,000 per incident.
The plaintiff in the lawsuit is Jerry Rodriguez, a private citizen who claims that Coeytaux prescribed and mailed abortion pills used by his former girlfriend to end her pregnancy.
Antiabortion crusader and attorney Jonathan Mitchell is representing Rodriguez. Mitchell is the architect of HB 7, the latest effort to place antiabortion enforcement in the hands of private citizens. Mitchell also authored Texas’ 2021 six-week abortion ban, which included “bounty hunter” laws allowing private citizens to sue anyone for “aiding or abetting” an illegal abortion for $10,000.
HB 7 “is the first law that a state has passed that has specifically tried to counteract another state’s shield laws,” said Marc Hearon, senior counsel for the Center for Reproductive Rights, who is defending Coeytaux. The Center for Reproductive Rights is representing Coeytaux in federal court.
Shield Laws Are Working—That’s Why They’re Under Attack
Telehealth providers in states like California, New York and Massachusetts have been able to serve patients in banned states because of shield laws: legal protections that prevent states with bans from prosecuting providers who are acting lawfully in the states where they work. So far, shield laws have withstood attacks from banned states.
In January, California Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the Louisiana attorney general’s order demanding Coeytaux’s extradition.
Newsom stated, unequivocally, “Louisiana’s request is denied. My position on this has been clear since 2022. We will not allow extremist politicians from other states to reach into California and try to punish doctors based on allegations that they provided reproductive healthcare services. Not today. Not ever. We will never be complicit with Trump’s war on women.”
After receiving an extradition warrant for Dr. Margaret Carpenter, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul made a similar declaration, referencing New York’s shield law, “I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana—not now, not ever.”
Texas and Louisiana’s legal threats are also bringing dangerous attention to other U.S. providers. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is seeking an injunction against Debra Lynch, a nurse practitioner and head of Her Safe Harbor, a Delaware-based telehealth practice that provides reproductive services, for mailing abortion pills to patients in Texas.
“These lawsuits are designed to intimidate providers, destroy shield laws and put targets on the backs of courageous abortion providers. Each civil or criminal prosecution puts their personal security, along with their families, at risk,” says duVergne Gaines, director of the National Clinic Access Project of the Feminist Majority.
HB 7 Is Not About Texas, It’s About Dismantling Abortion Access Everywhere
Texas’ total abortion ban already makes it one of 13 states with the most extreme abortion laws in the country. The stakes are enormous. Of the 18 supportive states that have enacted shield laws, eight of them specifically protect telehealth providers prescribing abortion medication regardless of where the patient is located.
HB 7 is about weaponizing the courts to reach beyond Texas to threaten providers who operate legally elsewhere. The fines are meant to make the financial risk of providing telehealth abortion care to banned states so expensive that providers will simply stop.
“This law goes against everything Texans value. It’s anti-freedom, anti-privacy, and anti-family,” said Hearron. “But these lawmakers are relentless in their attempts to scare doctors and patients from prescribing and accessing abortion pills—exactly because they are so safe, effective and widely used across the United States.”
Legal Strategists Are Working Overtime to Ban Medication Abortion
This lawsuit comes at a time when antiabortion forces are pushing the Trump administration, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to find other ways to ban abortion medication. That includes lobbying the FDA for another review despite the 25-year safety record despite the 25-year safety record.
Medication abortion has been a lifeline for women in the 21 states that have enacted total bans or restrictions harsher than the precedent set by Roe. As of 2023, medication abortion accounts for more than 60 percent of all U.S abortions and the majority of those in states with bans. Medication abortion is the reason bans aren’t working as intended, so antiabortion strategists are using multiple legal avenues to stop it: bringing test cases, undermining the science and safety record of the medications and inventing new legal theories.
President Trump appointed antiabortion extremists to positions in the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel who are working behind the scenes to resurrect the Comstock Act, an 1873 law that could be used to criminalize the mailing of abortion medication, and advocating for national “fetal personhood laws.”
Meanwhile, the state attorneys general of Missouri, Idaho and Kansas (where abortion is legal) have revived a 2022 case against the FDA seeking to restrict mifepristone access nationally, which was rejected by the Supreme Court.
The states brought the new, amended case, based on the Comstock Act, before federal Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, a Trump appointee who openly opposes abortion. An appeals court reversed Kacsmaryk’s decision, but the case will continue to move through the lower courts and may ultimately reach the Supreme Court.
Behind the Legal Avalanche: A Calculated Bet On a Friendly Supreme Court
The chaos and cumulative burden of simultaneous cases, legal campaigns using any available argument, coordinated across multiple states, is how they intend to defeat medication abortion. In the face of continuing interstate legal conflict, this conservative Supreme Court could be compelled to resolve the debate, likely in favor of limiting access to safe, proven abortion medications.
For the millions of women living in states with bans, access to abortion medications may be their only option. Overreaching state laws, bounty-hunter laws, criminal prosecutions, financial penalties, threats and doxxing are all aimed at the one target: women in need of reproductive care and the doctors willing to provide it. Providers across the country courageously say they will continue serving their patients and fighting for them.
The publicity surrounding this lawsuit has magnified the danger to Dr. Coeytaux. To support security measures protecting Remy Coeytaux, consider donating to his GoFundMe page.
Great Job Teresa Cisneros Burton & the Team @ Ms. Magazine for sharing this story.
