By Steve Gorman
(Reuters) -Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law a bill to crack down on mail-order distribution of abortion medications, already banned in his state, by empowering private citizens to sue individuals and companies for shipping the pills into Texas.
Decried by critics as an effort to turn citizens into anti-abortion “bounty hunters” and impose Texas laws on other states, the bill was signed by Abbott, a staunch anti-abortion Republican, on Wednesday night without announcement.
It cleared the state’s Republican-led legislature earlier this month.
The bill is designed to make it harder for women in Texas to obtain the prescription drugs enabling them to end their pregnancies at home in defiance of the state’s ban on nearly all abortions.
One unanswered question is whether the Texas statute will undermine “shield laws” enacted in Democratic-led states where abortion remains legal to safeguard providers against criminal and civil penalties stemming from another state’s abortion laws.
The Texas measure, similar to a citizen enforcement mechanism contained in an earlier state statute banning abortions once a fetal heartbeat could be detected, is due to take effect in about three months.
According to abortion rights advocates, pharmacologically terminated pregnancies now account for 63% of all U.S. abortions, three years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 landmark Roe v. Wade case that had established a constitutional right to abortion.
With many abortion clinics shuttered since 2022, telehealth consultations and mail-order shipments have provided an avenue for at-home abortions in places where women’s only other choice is to travel to a state where abortion remains legal.
TURNING CITIZENS INTO WHISTLEBLOWERS
The new measure allows ordinary citizens to file suit against medical providers, pharmaceutical companies, delivery services and individuals involved in helping women obtain the abortion pills — mifepristone and misoprostol.
Plaintiffs who prove their case in court would win $100,000 in damages per violation.
Women who take the abortion pills are expressly exempt from liability under the measure. There are also exceptions for the use of mifepristone and misoprostol in medically necessary procedures related to miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies.
Drug manufacturers and shipping companies such as FedEx, United Parcel Service and Amazon.com would not be held liable if they were shown to have implemented policies adhering to the state ban.
The bill is designed primarily “to hold individuals accountable who are mailing abortion pills into Texas and are seeking to avoid criminal prosecution,” said John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life, which lobbied heavily for the measure.
Critics say the measure will lead ordinary citizens to inform on their neighbors.
“The bill only works if we turn Texans against each other,” state Senator Carol Alvarado, a Democrat from Houston, said, when speaking against the bill.
According to Seago’s group, abortion pills are flowing into Texas from other states and countries at the rate of more than 19,000 orders a year.
The measure to stem the shipments is modeled after “qui tam” provisions of federal and state-level False Claims Act statutes designed to expose fraud against the government by enabling whistleblowers to sue alleged wrongdoers and pocket some of the proceeds as a reward. In recent years, citizen lawsuits have been embraced as a tool by some social conservatives to force compliance with anti-abortion laws.
A provision for citizen lawsuits was contained in a 2021 Texas statute outlawing abortions once fetal cardiac activity was detected. The Supreme Court’s reversal the following year of Roe paved the way for Texas and 13 other states to ban abortions altogether, and led anti-abortion forces to seek new enforcement tools.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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