Ugh.
Still a crook any way you look
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has accused a Delaware nurse practitioner of prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents in what is now the second lawsuit the state has filed against an out-of-state provider over such medications.
“The day of reckoning for this radical out-of-state abortion drug trafficker is here,” said Paxton in a news release on Tuesday about the lawsuit. “No one, regardless of where they live, will be freely allowed to aid in the murder of unborn children in Texas.”
Debra Lynch, the principal defendant in the case, operates Her Safe Harbor, which also uses the name Delaware Community Care. The service is an online clinic which prescribes medication packages containing abortion-inducing mifepristone and misoprostol, as well as anti-nausea medication and ibuprofen. The organization claims to help women in all 50 states in seeking abortion medication, according to its website.
The lawsuit alleges that Her Safe Harbor sent packages containing abortion medication to women in cities across Texas, including Beaumont, Fulshear, Tomball, Houston and El Paso.
Texas is suing Lynch on two counts. The first is a violation of Texas’ Human Life Protection Act (HLPA), which outlaws abortion unless performed by a physician and deemed medically necessary for the life of the mother.
The second count levied against Lynch is practicing medicine without a license. According to the lawsuit, Lynch, who is a nurse practitioner, is not a licensed physician and is not licensed to practice medicine in Texas.
The Texas Tribune reached out to Her Safe Harbor and Paxton’s office and requests for comment were not returned.
Texas is seeking to place two injunctions on Lynch — one prohibiting her or any collaborators from “performing, inducing, or attempting abortions” and another prohibiting her or any collaborators from “practicing medicine without a physician’s license.”
[…]
Lynch’s case will test Delaware’s “shield laws,” which operate similarly to New York’s and were strengthened in 2025 following Delaware’s House Bill 205. The bill broadened “shield law” protections established in 2022 by protecting providers from out-of-state prosecution after they have delivered health care services that are legal in the state.
Although Delaware and New York’s “shield laws” operate in similar ways, their language differs, according to Rebouche. New York’s laws protect a provider regardless of where their patients are located, whereas Delaware’s doesn’t. Whether or not this difference will result in an outcome different from the New York case will depend on the Delaware courts, according to Rachel Rebouche, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
The lawsuit against Lynch hinges primarily on three pieces of evidence, all of which are news articles in which Lynch commented. One is a January 16 article by the Austin American-Statesman, along with a September 2025 article by Medscape and a June 2025 article by the New York Times.
The January Austin American-Statesman article reported that Lynch helped facilitate up to 162 abortions per week.
The court case’s venue is set for Jefferson County in Southeast Texas because, according to the lawsuit, a “substantial part of the events or omissions giving rise to this claim occurred” in the county.
See here, here, and here for some background on the New York case. My best guess is that the results will be similar in Delaware, but it would be nice to hear that state’s Governor be as vocal about it as Kathy Hochul and Gavin Newsom have been. The main point is to get a case before SCOTUS, with the idea being to allow enforcement of civil judgments across state lines in a way that overrides the abortion shield laws. I do not feel nearly as confident about the ultimate outcome of that, and of course there are also criminal cases being pursued by Louisiana’s unhinged zealot AG. The federal government is doing its part to make medication abortion harder to get and more dangerous for those who seek it, too. So, you know, don’t freak out but also don’t get complacent. KUT has more.