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Ulster County Clerk in NY State rejects Texas back-door national abortion ban attack on local doctor [1]

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Date: 2025-03-28

From the Kingston Daily Freeman:

KINGSTON, N.Y. — In what could lead to the first U.S. Supreme Court challenge to state shield laws nationwide, the acting Ulster County clerk has refused to file a summary judgment requested by Texas against New Paltz doctor Margaret “Maggie” Daley Carpenter, he said Thursday. Texas charged Carpenter for providing the abortion drug mifepristone to a Texas resident via telehealth. In a statement, Acting Ulster County Clerk Taylor Bruck said he told Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton that the Ulster County Clerk’s Office would not file a summary judgment against Carpenter. The judgment seeks a civil penalty exceeding $100,000 due to the doctor’s failure to appear in court, Bruck said. “In accordance with the New York State Shield Law, I have refused this filing and will refuse any similar filings that may come to our office,” he said.

Acting County Clerk Bruck says what happens next at this point is uncertain: Texas could sue him, the county, and/or the state. In effect, Texas is demanding New York State enforce draconian Texas laws outlawing abortion against a doctor for actions that are legal and protected in New York State.

New York State passed a Shield Law to respond to Republican attacks on women’s healthcare and gender -related medicine.

Seeking, providing, and helping others obtain or provide abortion or gender-affirming health care is legal and protected in New York. But increasingly, other states have criminalized these types of health care. In response, New York has enacted several statutes known collectively as the “Shield Law” intended to protect providers and patients offering or seeking such care in New York against efforts to impose criminal and civil liability originating from outside our state. The Shield Law broadly prohibits law enforcement and other state officials from cooperating with investigations into reproductive or gender-affirming health care (“protected health care”) so long as the care was lawfully provided in New York. This memorandum summarizes the Shield Law provisions most relevant to state and local law enforcement. With respect to reproductive health care specifically, these protections apply even if the care was provided via telehealth to a patient located out-of-state, so long as the provider was physically present in New York.

emphasis added

There’s quite a bit more at the Daily Freeman, although the site is behind a paywall and infested with numerous pop-up ads.

While Republicans have claimed they are supposedly leaving abortion up to the states after the Supreme Court Dobbs decision that tossed Roe v. Wade, this is an attempt by one among several red states to impose a de facto national abortion ban. Barring Congress passing something equivalent to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, this case is going to lead to a battle over competing state laws while dealing with telemedicine that crosses state lines and other political boundaries.

Bruck has received many statements of support according to the Daily Freeman article by Diane Pineiro-Zucker, from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, State Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Rep. Pat Ryan, D-Gardiner, State Sen. Michelle Hinchey, D-Saugerties, State Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, D-Esopus, and Ulster County Executive Jen Metzger, among others.

Dr. Carpenter is facing these legal attacks not just from Texas but from Louisiana as well. It’s because of the leadership she’s taking in the fight for women’s health.

Per the Daily Freeman:

In December 2024, Carpenter was sued for up to $250,000 by Texas putting her at the center of a national controversy over shield laws protecting physicians who prescribe abortion medication to patients in states where abortion is illegal. The Texas suit named Carpenter who practices medicine at Nightingale Medical in New Paltz. She is also a co-founder of the nationwide Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT). According to the coalition website, it was founded in 2022 after the U.S..Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place for nearly 50 years.

The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT) is very clear about their mission:

The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT) is the only nationwide advocacy organization working to proactively advance telemedicine abortion in all 50 states. By providing clinicians with the direct legal and technical support needed to operate an interstate telemedicine practice, we can close the abortion accessibility gap for all patients – regardless of their zip codes.

Where this goes from here is probably headed for the Supreme Court — or might have been before January 2025 and Trump 2.0. The law is now whatever the President says it is — and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has taken on the role of Trump’s enforcer. Between her and Kash Patel at the F.B.I. it’s not impossible to rule out some kind of direct action against Dr. Carpenter and ACT.

Possible scenarios include the I.R.S. charging them with tax code violations, the FDA ruling abortion medications can’t be prescribed via telemedicine (if they don’t ban that use entirely), or even charging Dr. Carpenter with terrorism against unborn Americans. The possibility of assassination can’t be dismissed either. Dr. Barnett Slepian was murdered by an anti-abortion fanatic in upstate New York in 1998. It’s not a red state-only concern.

With all the other atrocities coming out of Washington D.C. these days, no one should think Republicans have given up their obsession with controlling women’s bodies.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/3/28/2313115/-Ulster-County-Clerk-in-NY-State-rejects-Texas-back-door-national-abortion-ban-attack-on-local-doctor?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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