AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Three women in Texas are being sued for wrongful death by a man who claimed he helped his wife now get medication for an abortion. This is another test of the ban that the state has imposed since the US Supreme Court overturned the Roe v. Wade.
In a lawsuit filed late Thursday in Galveston County, Marcus Silva pleaded guilty to assisting in the self-performed abortion as aiding and abetting murder. Silva is seeking $1 million in damages.
The woman who took the drug in July — weeks after the Supreme Court struck down a constitutional right to abortion that has existed since 1973 — was not named in the lawsuit. Texas law protects women who have abortions from liability.
Abortion rights groups condemned the lawsuit, calling it an intimidation tactic.
“This is a heinous attempt to scare people away from abortion care and scare people who support their friends, family, and community in times of need,” Autumn Katz, an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, said Friday in a statement. “The extremists behind these lawsuits are changing the law and the justice system to threaten and harass people who seek essential care and those who help them.”
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Silva is represented by Jonathan Mitchell — a former Texas attorney general who helped create one of the state’s abortion bans — attorneys from the conservative legal group Thomas More Society and Rep. Briscoe Cain, a Houston-area Republican.
“Anyone involved in the distribution or manufacture of abortion pills will be prosecuted to oblivion,” Cain said in a statement from his lawyers.
According to the lawsuit, the pill manufacturer will also be named as a defendant if identified in the discovery process.
The lawsuit alleges that there were text messages between the women discussing how to take a drug that could cause an abortion and how to help a pregnant woman plan to take the drug.
Lawsuits challenging abortion bans have emerged in the US as clinics close in the Republican-dominated state. Earlier this week in Texas – which has one of the strictest restrictions in the country, banning the procedure in almost all cases except medical emergencies – five women who said they were denied abortions even though their pregnancies were life-threatening sued the state.