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By SARA CLINE
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Louisiana pushed Tuesday to extradite a California physician accused of mailing abortion drugs, establishing a probable check of legal guidelines designed to guard telehealth suppliers who ship abortion drugs nationwide.
That is the second time Louisiana has pursued an out-of-state physician underneath its abortion restrictions, with Republican Gov. Jeff Landry saying on social media that he desires to convey the abortion supplier “to justice.” The 2 prison circumstances pit Louisiana, which has a number of the strictest abortion legal guidelines within the nation, in opposition to jurisdictions which have enacted what are often known as defend legal guidelines for suppliers who facilitate abortions from afar in states with bans.
“Louisiana has a zero tolerance coverage for individuals who subvert our legal guidelines, search to harm ladies, and promote abortion,” Landry stated in a submit X saying he’d despatched the extradition paperwork. California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s workplace didn’t instantly reply to an e-mail looking for remark
Remy Coeytaux, a doctor within the San Francisco Bay Space, faces a prison cost of abortion by the use of abortion-inducing medicine, Louisiana Legal professional Basic Liz Murrill introduced Tuesday. If convicted, the physician might withstand 50 years in jail and fines, Murrill stated.
An e-mail and a phone message looking for remark had been left for Coeytaux.
In response to courtroom paperwork, he’s accused of mailing mifepristone and misoprostol in 2023 to a Louisiana girl who sought the remedy by way of Help Entry, a European on-line telemedicine service. The girl took the drugs together to finish her being pregnant, investigators wrote within the indictment, which says authorities confirmed Coeytaux because the sender.
Murrill informed The Related Press she believes this “shouldn’t be the one time he despatched abortion drugs into our state” and that “it in all probability received’t be the final time we are going to indict him.”
The Heart for Reproductive Rights, a authorized advocacy group that’s representing Coeytaux in opposition to civil prices, burdened that the prison cost in Louisiana is an allegation.
“Whereas we will’t touch upon this matter itself, one factor is obvious — the state of Louisiana goes after docs for allegedly harming ladies, but they’re imposing an abortion ban that places ladies’s lives in danger day-after-day,” Nancy Northup, president of the group, stated in a written assertion.
Coeytaux can be the topic of a separate federal lawsuit filed in July in Texas, the place a person alleges the physician illegally offered abortion remedy to his girlfriend.
Remedy abortion has been authorized by the Meals and Drug Administration since 2000. Louisiana bans abortion in any respect levels of being pregnant with no exceptions for rape or incest. Physicians convicted of offering abortions withstand 15 years in jail and $200,000 in fines. Final yr, state lawmakers handed further restrictions concentrating on out-of-state prescribers and reclassified mifepristone and misoprostol as managed harmful substances.
The legislation got here after an arrest warrant was issued in Louisiana in a separate case for a New York physician accused of mailing abortion drugs to a pregnant minor. In that case, officers stated the minor’s mom ordered the remedy on-line and directed her daughter to take it. The mom was later arrested, pleaded not responsible and was launched on bond.
That case gave the impression to be the primary of its type because the U.S. Supreme Court docket overturned Roe v. Wade.
Louisiana additionally sought that physician’s extradition, however New York Gov. Kathy Hochul refused, saying her state’s defend legal guidelines had been designed to guard suppliers who supply abortion care to sufferers in states with bans or the place telehealth prescribing is restricted. New York and California are amongst eight states with such protections, based on the Guttmacher Institute, a analysis group that helps abortion rights.
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