Texas Man Sues Ex-Wife’s Friends for Allegedly Helping Her Obtain Abortion Pills in Violation of State Law

A Texas man has sued three friends of his ex-wife, accus­ing them of help­ing her obtain abor­tion med­ica­tion in vio­la­tion of state law after the Supreme Court over­ruled Roe v. Wade last year. Mar­cus Sil­va filed a wrong­ful death and con­spir­a­cy law­suit in Galve­ston Coun­ty, claim­ing that the three women arranged to obtain the pills and con­ceal their actions. Sil­va’s ex-wife is exempt from lia­bil­i­ty in the case, and is not a named defendant.

While it is unclear from the law­suit why Sil­va’s for­mer wife chose to ter­mi­nate her preg­nan­cy, it appears from alleged text mes­sages that she had already planned to leave him by that point. The text mes­sages includ­ed in the law­suit show that the women shared infor­ma­tion on abor­tion resources in Texas and dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of trav­el­ing out of state for care. One woman shared a link and screen­shots on infor­ma­tion regard­ing abor­tion med­ica­tion, not­ing that it could be done safe­ly at home. Sil­va’s wife thanked the women for their help, and the women tried to guess how far along she was in the preg­nan­cy before pick­ing a day to begin the process.

Mifepri­s­tone, which was approved by the FDA more than 20 years ago to ter­mi­nate a preg­nan­cy up to 10 weeks, is tak­en with a sec­ond med­ica­tion, miso­pros­tol, and is high­ly effec­tive. The law in Texas ban­ning abor­tion after six weeks went into effect on Sep­tem­ber 1, 2022. Requests for abor­tion pills through resource orga­ni­za­tions such as Aid Access sky­rock­et­ed afterwards.

Last month, an anti-abor­tion group filed a law­suit in Texas in an attempt to get mifepri­s­tone off the table entire­ly. The group alleges that the gov­ern­ment did not ade­quate­ly eval­u­ate mifepristone’s safe­ty and shouldn’t have made it acces­si­ble via tele­health dur­ing the Covid pan­dem­ic. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s admin­is­tra­tion has fought back, fil­ing a response that said the ben­e­fits of mifepri­s­tone out­weigh any risks. The gov­ern­ment has also stat­ed that not only is the drug safe, but that the “pub­lic inter­est would be dra­mat­i­cal­ly harmed” if mifepri­s­tone is tak­en off the market.