What Kind Of Freaks Would Sue Over Someone Else's Abortion Medication, Anyway?
The same abusive exes who sued over abortions (and lost), we guess.
Last week, the state of Texas passed a brand new abortion bounty-hunting law, this time “empowering” private citizens to sue out-of-state providers who mail abortion medication to Texas residents for $100,000 — 10 times more than they would get for suing someone who provided or otherwise helped someone obtain an abortion in the state. Hypothetically, anyway.
Because, you see … not one person has won a single one of these abortion bounty-hunting lawsuits so far. Not one!
Knowing the anti-abortion-rights crowd, we know what they were most desperately hoping for with this. They wanted the lawsuit to come from a young woman who would accuse an abortion provider and perhaps an abuser or just some abortion-loving Svengali of having manipulated her into getting an abortion when she was at her most vulnerable. What did they get? Not that! Ever! Not once!
In fact, all Jonathan Mitchell, the “architect” of the abortion bounty-hunting law, was able to scrape together was Marcus Silva, who was less interested in the sanctity of life than he was in using the threat of a lawsuit to force his ex to keep having sex with him and cleaning his house.
And even that guy dropped it eventually.
In a bit of a plot twist, the story used by one activist to sell the $100,000 abortion pill bounty to lawmakers — the story of a woman whose boyfriend ordered abortion medication online and then slipped it into her hot cocoa — may not even be true. Capt. Christopher Cooprider, the (now former) boyfriend accused, has not actually been charged with the crime and is now suing ex-girlfriend Liane Davis for over $1 billion. According to Cooprider, Davis had a spontaneous miscarriage caused by her own actions and she blamed him out of vengeance. She reported it to police and they looked into it but found no evidence of criminal conduct.
To be clear, it is already very illegal, not just in Texas but everywhere, to put abortion medication in someone’s drink.
The fact is, the only people who would even know that someone took an abortion pill would be the people closest to them — and absolutely no one who actually cares about that person would put them through something like this, so you’re pretty much going to be left with abusers and grifters, the same folks who have yet to have any success with the other bounty hunting law. Whoops!
On top of that, it bears mentioning that the abortion providers mailing medication to Texas and other abortion ban states are in states that have shield laws protecting them from stupid lawsuits from abusive exes who live in Texas. Indeed, Jonathan Mitchell has already tried to sue a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to the ex-girlfriend of an extremely creepy man. He even filed it as a class action suit on behalf of “all current and future fathers of unborn children in the United States.”
He failed. Why? Because New York has a shield law, so the county clerk will not be filing that lawsuit for him or for Ken Paxton or anybody.
“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. Since this decision is likely to result in further litigation, I must refrain from discussing specific details about the situation,” acting clerk Taylor Bruck said at the time.
Anyone who comes out of the woodwork to sue any of these doctors is going to do nothing more than remind people of a very good reason for why abortion should be legal — not being attached to some absolute lunatic for the rest of one’s life.
Sadly, this doesn’t mean that the law won’t have a chilling effect. It could very well make some doctors nervous about prescribing pills to patients in Texas, and it could make some believe that they will not be able to get abortion medication through the mail anymore and result in them doing something less safe to end their pregnancy. That would be really bad.
Hopefully, doctors and patients will be aware of this and not let the government of Texas ruin any lives (at least not in this particular way).
I recall that when Greg Abbott was asked about rape he responded that it wouldn't matter because he'd make rape in Texas a thing of the past.
Somebody should ask him how that's going because it looks to me like rape is increasing in Texas.
They really really should fix that first. We'll wait...
"What Kind Of Freaks Would Sue Over Someone Else's Abortion Medication, Anyway?"
Republicans. It's Republicans, right? Is this a trick question?