A Texas woman is suing a man for wrongful death for allegedly slipping abortion-inducing medication into her hot chocolate. 

The plaintiff, Liana Davis, filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against Christopher Cooprider and an organization that mails abortion-inducing medication to all 50 states, Aid Access, and its founder, Rebecca Gomperts. 

Ms. Davis is being represented by a lawyer who helped craft Texas’s six-week abortion ban, Jonathan Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell also represents another client in a recent federal wrongful death lawsuit involving abortion medication that was shipped to the Lone Star State. The federal lawsuits appear to be part of a strategy to get the Supreme Court to consider the legality of the interstate shipment of abortion medication. Ms. Davis’s lawsuit is believed to be the first such case brought by a woman. 

Ms. Davis alleges that Mr. Cooprider, whom the lawsuit describes as a “Marine pilot in training” temporarily stationed in Texas, impregnated her but pressured her to terminate the pregnancy.

“He wanted the baby dead — and he made that clear to [Ms. Davis] in no uncertain terms,” the lawsuit alleges. The issue became a “daily source of contention,” according to the pleading.

Mr. Cooprider also allegedly threatened to testify against her in her divorce proceedings against her “soon-to-be” ex-husband, in an attempt to pressure her to terminate the pregnancy.

The lawsuit includes screenshots of text messages informing Ms. Davis that he found an “American website” that would mail abortion pills and that the pills are “on their way here.” In response, Ms. Davis criticized him for ordering the pills without her permission.

The lawsuit alleges that Mr. Cooprider started to worry in April that he was running out of time, as the FDA only approved the medication for the first 10 weeks of a pregnancy, and Ms. Davis was on week eight of her pregnancy. The lawsuit alleges he asked to “hang out” for a “trust building night” where they could “catch up” on Amazon’s “Reacher.” He also offered to “make us some warm relaxing tea instead of alcohol,” according to screenshots of text messages he allegedly sent to Ms. Davis. 

The lawsuit alleges that Mr. Cooprider dissolved 10 abortion pills in hot chocolate and that within 30 minutes of Ms. Davis consuming the drink, she was “hemorrhaging and cramping.”

Before Ms. Davis left her house to go to the emergency room, the lawsuit says she discovered packaging for the abortion medication with pills missing.

The lawsuit accuses Mr. Cooprider and Aid Access of violating several Texas laws and seeks “nominal, compensatory, and punitive damages.”

Aid Access did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication. Mr. Cooprider also declined to comment. 

Ms. Davis also accuses the defendants of violating the anti-obscenity Comstock Act of 1873, which has not been enforced for decades but is still on the books. The law prohibited the mailing of “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” materials. It also banned the mailing of contraception or medication intended to induce an abortion. In 1971, Congress repealed the portion that prohibited the mailing of contraception, but lawmakers have failed to strip out the reference to abortion.

In 2022, President Biden’s Department of Justice issued a determination saying that the Comstock Act “does not prohibit the mailing of certain drugs that can be used to perform abortions where the sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully.” It said that because there are “manifold ways” that recipients in every state may lawfully use such drugs, including to produce an abortion, the mailing of such drugs to a particular jurisdiction “is an insufficient basis for concluding that the sender intends them to be used unlawfully.”

A letter published on the Journal of the American Medical Association’s website says that between July 2023 and August 2024, Aid Access shipped 120,000 sets of abortion pills, and that roughly 100,000 were sent to states that either have abortion bans or restrictions on the shipment of such medication. 

Mr. Mitchell’s decision to represent Ms. Davis, and a Texas man who is suing a California-based abortion provider, comes as he has become a vocal advocate of the idea that the Comstock Act bans the shipment of abortion medication.

State officials in Texas and Louisiana are pursuing civil and criminal penalties against a New York-based doctor for allegedly sending abortion medication to the states, which are seen as precursors to federal lawsuits with the goal of getting the Supreme Court to bring an end to the interstate shipment of abortion medication.