New York on Thursday rejected a request from Louisiana to extradite a doctor who was charged with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor in the Deep South state, setting up a potential test of laws that protect physicians who prescribe such medications to states with bans.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said she will not honor Louisiana's request to arrest and send the doctor to Louisiana after she was charged with violating the southern state's strict anti-abortion law.
“I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana,” Hochul said at a news conference in Manhattan. “Not now, not ever.”
She also said she sent out a notice to law enforcement in New York that instructed them to not cooperate with out-of-state warrants for such charges.
The case against New York-based Dr. Maggie Carpenter appears to be the first instance of criminal charges against a doctor accused of prescribing abortion pills to another state.
Pills have become the most common method of abortion in the U.S. and are at the epicenter of political and legal fights over abortion access following the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The showdown between New York and Louisiana over Carpenter is expected to result in a court case that could test New York's so-called shield law, which gives legal protections to doctors who prescribe abortion medication to conservative states where abortions are banned or otherwise limited. Other Democratic-controlled states have similar shield laws.
Prosecutors in West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, indicted Carpenter on charges that she violated the state's near-total abortion ban, which allows physicians convicted of performing abortions, including one with pills, to be sentenced up to 15 years in prison.
Louisiana authorities said the girl who received the pills experienced a medical emergency and had to be transported to the hospital. The girl's mother was also charged and has turned herself in to police.
In a videotaped statement Thursday, Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said “there is only one right answer in this situation, and it is that that doctor must face extradition to Louisiana where she can stand trial and justice will be served.”
Landry's office did not immediately return an emailed request for comment sent after Hochul refused the extradition request.
Carpenter was also sued by the attorney general of Texas late last year under similar allegations. That case did not involve criminal charges.
