SACRAMENTO — Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday rejected a request to extradite a California doctor accused of offering abortion medicine to a Louisiana affected person, marking the newest conflict between states with sharply totally different abortion legal guidelines following the U.S. Supreme Courtroom’s 2022 determination overturning Roe v. Wade.
“Louisiana’s request is denied,” Newsom stated in an announcement. “My place on this has been clear since 2022: We is not going to permit extremist politicians from different states to achieve into California and attempt to punish medical doctors based mostly on allegations that they supplied reproductive well being care companies. Not at this time. Not ever.”
The extradition request stems from legal expenses filed in Louisiana in opposition to Dr. Rémy Coeytaux, a California-based doctor accused of prescribing and mailing abortion capsules to a Louisiana resident in 2023 by a telemedicine service. Louisiana Atty. Gen. Liz Murrill introduced the indictment Tuesday, and Gov. Jeff Landry stated he would signal an extradition order.
“It’s appalling to see the California Governor and Legal professional Normal overtly admitting that they are going to defend a person from being held accountable for unlawful, medically unethical, and harmful conduct that led to a lady being coerced into terminating the lifetime of her unborn baby,” Murrill stated in response to California’s actions.
Because the Supreme Courtroom eradicated the constitutional proper to abortion in 2022, a rising variety of states have moved to criminalize reproductive care. About 16 states, together with Texas and Louisiana, now ban abortion nearly totally, with some permitting legal penalties or civil lawsuits in opposition to suppliers.
These legal guidelines have heightened issues amongst physicians about potential authorized publicity when touring to or training throughout state traces — even when their house states explicitly defend reproductive and gender-affirming care.
Newsom’s workplace stated federal and state regulation give the governor discretion to say no extradition requests when the alleged conduct occurred in California. The governor pointed to an govt order he issued shortly after the Supreme Courtroom’s abortion ruling, in addition to subsequent laws, designed to protect California suppliers and sufferers from out-of-state investigations and prosecutions.
The case underscores a widening authorized standoff between states with near-total abortion bans and those who have enacted so-called protect legal guidelines to guard suppliers who supply abortion care, together with medicine abortions, to sufferers from restrictive states. California is amongst at the least eight states with such protections.
Newsom solid his determination to reject the extradition as a part of a broader push by California to guard reproductive rights as Republican-led states transfer to limit abortion entry.
“We are going to by no means be complicit with Trump’s warfare on ladies,” Newsom stated.
