Building on some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, on September 17th, Texas Governor Abbott signed HB7. This first-of-its-kind law allows private citizens to sue anyone who “manufactures, distributes, mails, transports, delivers, prescribes, or provides” medication abortion pills to Texans. The civil law provides a minimum of $100,000 in damages to be paid by the defendant; however, the sibling, grandparent, or father of the fetus are entitled to keep the entire amount, while anyone else who sues is only able to receive $10,000. The rest is given to a charity of the plaintiff’s choosing. The bill expressly prohibits a pregnant person who self-manages their abortion from being sued.
It is important to understand HB7 in the context of Texas’s history of using creative legislative approaches to eliminate abortions in the state. In 2021, before Roe v. Wade was even overturned, Texas became one of the first states to restrict most abortions in defiance of the 1973 high court ruling granting the right to abortion in the US. SB8 allows private citizens to sue anyone who aided in an abortion after approximately six weeks gestation. Although very few people have been sued under SB8, the law created a chilling effect that deterred people from helping those seeking an abortion due to the financial and legal consequences.
HB7 comes at a time when a quarter of abortions are now provided through telehealth, and when state reproductive health care shield laws—policies that legally protect individuals and entities who provide reproductive health care in a state where it is legal from investigations and criminal penalties when they provide services to people who reside in states that have banned abortion—gear up to be challenged at the Supreme Court. In the three years since Dobbs, 12 states, including Texas have banned abortions. Some of these states have also attempted to block residents from within their state from going out of state to receive abortion care or have attempted to punish doctors assisting those in their states who seek abortions. In December 2024, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued a New York doctor providing medication abortion pills to Texas residents, the first such lawsuit in the nation. Despite state abortion bans and restrictions, the total number of abortions nationwide has slightly increased since Roe was overturned, likely due to expanded access to medication abortion pills through telehealth and other factors. In Texas, almost 4,000 abortions took place using telehealth in December 2024 alone.
As HB7 is implemented later this year, access to medication abortion through telehealth for Texas residents will likely shrink as the intended chilling effect of this legislation is felt across the state. Furthermore, it is likely that “copycat” legislation will be adopted in other states that wish to restrict access to medication abortion via telehealth within their borders.