Louisiana officials seeking to prosecute a New York doctor who sent abortion medication to a resident of that state were thrown a roadblock on Thursday, when New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, said she would block extradition attempts.
Ms. Hochul’s declaration sets the stage for a likely battle in federal court over whether states that support abortion rights can protect doctors who provide abortion services to patients in states with abortion bans.
The Louisiana case is the first criminal indictment to test a key strategy of states that support abortion rights: so-called shield laws, enacted in eight states, stipulating that officials and agencies of those states will not cooperate with legal actions taken by states with abortion bans against out-of-state abortion providers.
The Louisiana extradition order is for Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, of New Paltz, N.Y. In January, a Louisiana grand jury issued a criminal indictment against Dr. Carpenter, accusing her of violating Louisiana’s near-total abortion ban by sending pills to a pregnant teenager in that state.
“I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana — not now, not ever,” Ms. Hochul said at a news conference on Thursday.
The Louisiana charges followed a separate civil suit filed against Dr. Carpenter in December by the attorney general of Texas, alleging that she had flouted that state’s abortion ban by prescribing and sending pills to a woman there.
On Thursday, a Texas judge issued the first ruling in that case, issuing a permanent injunction ordering the doctor to stop prescribing and sending abortion pills to patients in Texas and fining her more than $100,000. Since New York’s shield law prohibits cooperation with out-of-state legal actions, Dr. Carpenter and her lawyers had not responded to the Texas suit or appeared in court for a hearing on Wednesday. As a result, the judge said that Dr. Carpenter was in default of the legal process and granted the attorney general’s motion.
Dr. Carpenter, a reproductive health specialist who works with a telemedicine abortion organization, could not be reached for comment, nor could lawyers representing her.
The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, an organization that Dr. Carpenter co-founded, has issued statements defending her work and those who help provide abortion pills to women in all 50 states. “This state-sponsored effort to prosecute a doctor providing safe and effective care should alarm everyone,” the coalition said in a recent statement about the Louisiana charges.
Earlier this week, Louisiana’s governor, Jeff Landry, signed a warrant seeking to compel Dr. Carpenter to stand trial in Louisiana. “There is only one right answer in this situation: the doctor must face extradition to Louisiana where justice will be served,” Mr. Landry said on Thursday in a post on X.
Ms. Hochul’s office received the warrant Thursday afternoon, prompting her to call the news conference.
“We have put in place strict shield laws that anticipate this very situation,” Ms. Hochul said. She added that she had told law enforcement across the state that they should not enforce certain out-of-state warrants against doctors who are “protected under our laws.”
The potential outcome of the likely court battle between Louisiana and New York is unclear, but Mary Ziegler, a law professor and abortion expert at the University of California, Davis, said there was legal precedent for extradition not being required for defendants who were not in the state where the alleged crime was committed and did not flee from that state.
The indictment against Dr. Carpenter, which includes few details, said that the case involved a patient who was under 18 and whose mother ordered abortion pills and gave them to her in April 2024. The mother was also charged with violating the state’s abortion ban and was arrested and released on bond. The New York Times is not disclosing her name to protect the privacy of her daughter.
Louisiana officials have said the mother coerced her daughter to take the pills, but they have also said that the mother was not with the daughter at the time the pills were taken. Ms. Hochul has said she is not sure if there was any coercion.
Ms. Hochul has been looking for ways to protect doctors like Ms. Carpenter. Last week, she signed a law that allows health-care practitioners to avoid putting their names on prescriptions for medications used in abortions, and to instead use the names of their medical practices.
The hope, she said, was to better conceal the identities of providers who might otherwise end up in the cross hairs of prosecutors in states with restrictive abortion laws.
This is one of several fights Ms. Hochul has found herself in with Republican political leaders in Washington and across the country. On Wednesday, the Trump administration sued New York over its migrant policies and accused state officials of prioritizing “illegal aliens over American citizens.”
In response, Ms. Hochul, who had been scheduled to meet President Trump on Thursday in Washington but canceled when the lawsuit was made public, blasted Attorney General Pam Bondi and the merits of the case.
“New York is not backing down,” Ms. Hochul said.