Texas man sues ex-wife’s friends for allegedly helping her buy abortion pills

A Texas man has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against three of his ex-wife’s friends for allegedly helping her get abortion pills last year.

The lawsuit seeks more than $1 million from each of the three defendants and an injunction preventing them from “distributing abortion pills.” A woman who has an abortion is not a defendant in a lawsuit.

This is believed to be the first such incident since Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization The decision last June reversed a decades-long precedent for abortion rights, allowing laws criminalizing abortion to take effect across the country.

The plaintiff, Marcus A. Silva of Galveston County, Texas, alleges that his then-wife discovered she was pregnant in July 2022 and tried to hide both the pregnancy and the self-abortion from him. According to a lawsuit filed in state court, the couple divorced in February this year.

The lawsuit relies heavily on information contained in text messages exchanged between Silva’s ex-wife and her friends, the three defendants, last year. In the messages included in the document as evidence, women discuss the various ways to obtain abortion pills and the logistics involved in performing an abortion on their own at home.

In one of the conversations, one of the friends says to the pregnant woman: “You can do it at home. We can take the day off and do it at my house if you want.”

In another message, a woman expresses her gratitude to her friends, telling one of them, “Your help means the world to me,” and adding that she is “so lucky to have you all.”

Silva’s lead attorney is Jonathan Mitchell, who is known for developing the legal strategy for Senate Bill 8, Texas’ unique abortion ban that went into effect in 2021 after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to block it. This law, enacted a few months before Dobbs the decision circumvented federal precedent by applying what opponents call the “bounty hunter” system. This allows individuals to sue anyone believed to be helping a patient get an illegal abortion in Texas for tens of thousands of dollars.

But in this case, a different and possibly more aggressive strategy is being used, instead citing the state’s wrongful death, homicide, and anti-abortion laws. The lawsuit describes assisted abortion in Texas as an “act of murder” and notes that the abortion was performed after Dobbs ruling, arguing that it is not protected by any federal precedent.

It repeatedly describes the abortion as the “murder” of Silva’s “unborn child” with “illicitly obtained pills”. The lawsuit also alleges that friends “conspired” with the pregnant woman to secretly terminate her pregnancy.

The lawsuit specifically notes that Silva’s ex-wife is “exempt from civil and criminal liability, and Marcus does not make any claims against her.” After dobbs, the question of whether people who have had abortions should be prosecuted has been a constant subject of speculation and sometimes debate among opponents of abortion rights, although several major anti-abortion groups have taken a public stand against prosecuting the patients themselves.

Former Texas Senator Wendy Davis, senior adviser to Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, said in a statement that abortion rights activists are “outraged, but we’re not surprised” and accused anti-abortion groups of using the courts “as a tool.” fear and intimidation.”

The lawsuit comes as a federal judge in north Texas is considering a separate lawsuit filed by anti-abortion groups seeking to force the Food and Drug Administration to withdraw mifepristone, a drug used in most medical abortions in the US. from the market. A competing lawsuit filed by a group of Democratic state attorneys general seeks to preserve access by preventing the FDA from removing the drug.

Access to medical abortion is increasingly the subject of litigation and legislation related to abortion rights in the United States. This is largely due to its increasing use by patients seeking abortion; over half of abortions in the US are now done with the pill, and pills are often more affordable than surgical procedures for people living in states with restrictive abortion laws.

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