The United States has been deeply divided on abortion for decades, but since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, those divides have deepened as differing legal regimes emerge across the nation. In some states, such as California and New York, destroying an unborn person in the womb is a fiercely defended “human right.” In others, such as Alabama and Mississippi, abortion is illegal with limited exceptions on the explicit grounds of unborn human rights. Not since chattel slavery have Americans been so at odds on an issue of fundamental personhood.
In response to this patchwork legal regime, abortion activists have created a vast underground network to ship abortifacient drugs into states with pro-life laws, a perverse mirror and moral opposite of the life-giving Underground Railroad. Activists refer to areas with pro-life laws, without irony, as “abortion deserts,” and ignore the widely documented risks of the abortion pill. Indeed, in a spectacular act of gaslighting, abortion activists even insist that women who died from complications of the abortion pill—such as Amber Thurman in Georgia—were killed by a lack of access to abortion. Clashes between these legal regimes are inevitable.
A grotesque example of this is currently playing out between New York and Louisiana, where abortion has been illegal with exceptions since Dobbs. A West Baton Rouge grand jury indicted Dr. Margaret Carpenter of New York and an unnamed thirty-nine-year-old Louisiana mother on charges of criminal abortion by means of abortifacient drugs. The mother ordered the abortion pills from Carpenter and allegedly coerced her daughter—who had a wanted pregnancy—to take them. According to District Attorney Tony Clayton, the unnamed girl even “had a reveal party planned.” The charges carry a potential prison term of between one and five years and may be the first of its kind in the nation.
Dr. Margaret Carpenter, a family practitioner, owns a medical clinic in New Paltz in upstate New York and is also the CEO of Possible Health Medical. In April 2024, the Louisiana mother ordered mifepristone from Carpenter online after filling out a questionnaire. Carpenter did not interview the intended (and unaware) recipient of the abortion pills, which were mailed to the post office in Port Allen, Louisiana. “[The mother] got the box of pills, gave it to her daughter, and told her to take them,” Clayton stated. “The child took the pills alone.” The girl experienced a “medical emergency” and was taken to the hospital by ambulance, where thankfully she was “treated and stabilized.”
Despite the fact that a teenage girl was coerced into an abortion, New York Governor Kathy Hochul immediately framed the indictment as an attack on “reproductive rights,” although she did not mention that in this case, it was the victim’s “reproductive rights” that were clearly violated. “Louisiana is attempting to prosecute a New York doctor for providing reproductive health care,” she posted on X. “After Roe was overturned, I signed laws to protect patients & doctors from exactly this type of action. We will not comply with an extradition request. We will remain a safe harbor.”
