Louisiana is turning up the pressure on out-of-state abortion providers by passing a bill designed to open them up to civil litigation for mailing abortion-inducing medication to people in the state. 

Louisiana’s legislature passed a bill this week, the “Justice for Victims of Abortion Drug Dealers Act,” that lets women sue out-of-state doctors who performed or attempted to perform abortions, including those who ship abortion-inducing medication to patients in the Pelican State. 

A state representative who co-sponsored the bill, Julie Emerson, told Nola.com that under state law, it is illegal to provide abortion-inducing drugs. However, she said officials are struggling to stop abortion-inducing drugs from being mailed to patients from out-of-state providers. 

“When doctors and pharmacies realize that this is a thing in Louisiana and that they could be civilly liable, then they’ll stop sending them here,” Ms. Emerson said. 

Lawmakers watered down some portions of the bill and stripped out a provision that would have allowed the “mother of the unborn child,” her parents, or the man who impregnated her to sue. 

The version of the bill that passed only lets the woman who was pregnant sue anybody who “substantially facilitates an abortion,” which the legislation defines as “administering, prescribing, dispensing, distributing, selling or coordinating the sale of an abortion-inducing drug to a person in this state.”

During a committee hearing as lawmakers considered the bill, Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, said there are “activists who are intent on sending these pills to people through the mail.”

“This bill provides for civil liability and allows another mechanism — it is another tool in the toolbox — for people who are harmed by somebody who is intent on violating our laws,” she said. 

The Republican governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, is expected to sign the bill, which could accelerate what appears to be a brewing battle over the shipping of abortion medication to states with abortion bans.

Louisiana officials have been trying to extradite a doctor in New York, Margaret Carpenter, who was indicted for allegedly mailing abortion medication to a minor. New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, has defiantly declared that she will not honor the extradition request because of the state’s shield law, which is designed to protect doctors who prescribe abortion pills from criminal charges or civil judgments from states with abortion bans.

Shield laws are a novel concept yet to be tested in the courts. NPR notes that eight states have laws protecting doctors from extradition if they prescribe abortion medication via telemedicine, and 14 have various shield laws or executive orders that do not provide protections for telemedicine.

While there are legal questions about whether Dr. Carpenter can be extradited, opening the door for women to file civil lawsuits against doctors may prompt a legal battle over shield laws if officials in states with those protections refuse to enforce civil judgments.

In March, an acting court clerk in New York, Taylor Bruck, refused to enforce a fine issued in Texas against Dr. Carpenter for mailing abortion medication to the state. Mr. Bruck also declared that he would “refuse any similar filings that may come to our office.”