On February 26, AAPLOG sent an open letter to New York Governor Kathy Hochul urging her to reprioritize pregnant women’s safety following her efforts to promote unsafe “telemedicine” abortion using so-called “shield laws.” This letter comes after Governor Hochul signed legislation on February 3 designed to prevent the identification and prosecution of New York physicians who send abortion drugs to women in pro-life states. The bill allows physicians to choose not to write their own name on abortion drug prescriptions, instead entering the name of their practice.
In its letter, AAPLOG expresses our concerns about this policy, stating, “concealing doctors’ identity recklessly endangers the patients we’re meant to serve.” We argued,
As physicians, when we prescribe a medication, our job goes beyond simply writing the order for that medication. Patients deserve a doctor who can assess their individual risks for a drug – for mifepristone this assessment necessitates an in-person consultation – accompany them through their entire course of care, and ensure their successful and complete treatment.
The bill was crafted in response to pro-life Texas and Louisiana’s legal actions against New York physician Dr. Margaret Carpenter for mailing abortion drugs to women in their states in violation of their pro-life laws, resulting in them going to the emergency room with complications. Dr. Carpenter was identified as the supplier of these drugs because her name was on these women’s prescriptions. Governor Hochul’s bill intends to prevent telemedicine abortionists from being tracked down in the same way. This is the state’s latest “shield law” designed to stop the state from complying with pro-life states’ efforts to enforce their own abortion laws and pursue justice when New York physicians are involved.
The cases against Dr. Carpenter highlight the dangers of mail-order abortion and the recklessness of policies like the one Governor Hochul signed into law. In the Texas case, a judge fined the abortionist $100,000 after one of the women to whom she sent abortion drugs ended up in the emergency room. The Louisiana woman to whom Dr. Carpenter allegedly sent abortion drugs was, as it turned out, not even pregnant, but rather the mother of a teenager who was allegedly forced to take these drugs and was transported to the emergency room. Our preborn & pregnant patients both deserve better than this negligent so-called “care.”
