Paxton, Texas Right To Life Recruit Men To Inform On Pregnant Partners For Seeking Abortion

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the state’s largest anti-reproductive choice organization, Texas Right to Life, are teaming up to further restrict abortion access. Their plan is to recruit men to inform on pregnant partners and take a lawsuit to the conservative U.S. Supreme Court.

Since the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the loss of constitutionally protected abortion access under the 14^th Amendment in June 2022, abortion has been all but banned in the state of Texas. Pregnant Texans have just two options. They can flee the state for an abortion, or they can receive medication (mifepristone and misoprostol) through the mail. Both are still currently legal, though Paxton and Texas Right to Life are attempting to change that.

Last month, Paxton sued New York doctor Margaret Daley Carpenter for mailing abortion medication to a Collin County woman. It is currently illegal for an out-of-state doctor to prescribe an abortion to a Texas resident that would violate the six-week ban. However, in New York, doctors are protected from out of state prosecution for delivering care via telemedicine. The dissonance between the two state laws means that the lawsuit has a very good chance of reaching the U.S. Supreme Court.

The lawsuit was launched after Paxton read a report about a Galveston man, Marcus Silva, who sued friends of his ex-wife for helping her procure an abortion. Though Silva ultimately settled the case, the report showed anti-reproductive choice advocates that angry men could be a powerful force at catching pregnant people receiving care.

“The strategy is now to tell dads that if you’re the father of a child victim of an abortion, you have legal rights, there may be a way to hold these people accountable,” Texas Right to Life president John Seago told the Washington Post.

The group will be launching a social media advertising campaign in the next month to recruit more men for their legal fight.

The Paxton and Texas Right to Life plan is likely a form of reproductive coercion. Forcing a pregnant person to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term is often a form of abuse and control. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines reproductive coercion as a way to “maintain power and control in a relationship related to reproductive health.” Somewhere between 15 and 25 percent of abused women reported that their male partners interfered with their reproductive health.

Texas has been a leader in circumventing constitutional questions around abortion by outsourcing enforcement to concerned citizens and the civil courts. Before the fall of Roe, a state law allowed anyone to sue a pregnant person or medical professional for obtaining or performing an abortion, with a $10,000 bounty attached. This new strategy continues the same principle, encouraging Texas residents to police pregnant people, especially intimate partners who demand a say in whether a pregnancy continues.