Lila Bonow, Alana Edmondson and Aiyana Knauer prepare to take abortion pill while demonstrating in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as the justices hear hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, a case about a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks, on Dec. 1, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
National attention is on Louisiana for what’s thought to be the first criminal prosecution of a doctor for an illegal medication abortion carried out with drugs sent through the mail. The case has already produced the expected political clash over reproductive health rights.
It will also bring renewed scrutiny to the state’s strict anti-abortion statutes, which make coerced abortion illegal but do not permit the termination of pregnancies that result from rape and incest. Both matters involve forced compliance, yet Louisiana law treats them drastically different.
Whether the doctor’s case actually gets off the ground is in question, as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she will uphold her state’s shield laws that protect telehealth providers like Dr. Margaret Carpenter. Investigators allege Carpenter’s company sent the drugs to a West Baton Rouge Parish mother who ordered her teen daughter to take them last April.
The Illuminator is not identifying the mother, who was also charged, to protect her daughter’s identity.
Attorney General Liz Murrill will be trying the case along with 18th Judicial District Attorney Tony Clayton. In social media posts and statements Friday, Murrill and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry both used the word “coercion” to describe the alleged offense. Clayton told the Illuminator the mother threatened to force her teen daughter out of their home unless she took the pills she reportedly received through the mail.
“This case is about coercion. Plain and simple,” Landry said.
“The allegations in this case have nothing to do with reproductive health care, this is about coercion,” Murrill said. “This is about forcing somebody to have an abortion who didn’t want one.”
Clayton stopped short of saying the case involves forced compliance, emphasizing instead that the mother and doctor allegedly violated the state law that prohibits mailing, receiving and administering abortion drugs in Louisiana. His indictment cites the 2022 law that made such shipments illegal and does not cover the coerced use of those drugs.
Coercion falls under a separate law approved last year that made the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol controlled dangerous substances. Landry and Murrill backed the measure, despite the drugs in question having other life-saving applications.
Clayton and Murrill wouldn’t say if they plan to amend the indictment to include a violation of the 2024 statute that covers coerced medication abortions, but their public statements seem to lean heavily in that direction.
This case also highlights another apparent hole in Louisiana abortion laws involving the role of parents. If a minor requires an abortion under the very limited emergency exceptions allowed, at least one parent must provide consent for a doctor to perform it. Only the 2024 law on mifepristone and misoprostol appears to deal with a coercion scenario — and only when “means of fraud” are involved.
Perhaps prosecutors will argue that obtaining the abortion drugs illegally through the mail amounts to fraud in the West Baton Rouge instance. Murrill has alleged the teen wanted to keep her baby to back their stance that her mother forced her to take the abortion pills.
Worth noting is that Louisiana lawmakers rejected a proposal last year to add exceptions for rape and incest to state’s abortion ban.
The ultimate goal of Murrill and Landry, two staunch Republicans, might be to challenge New York’s shield law before the U.S. Supreme Court, similar to an ongoing dispute over a new Louisiana law that requires public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. The governor and attorney general have vowed to defend that law to the utmost, potentially putting a cornerstone of the U.S. Constitution in peril.
In their political battle with New York’s Democratic leaders, an already fragile mother-daughter relationship could become a casualty.
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