<\/p>\n
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton during President Donald Trump’s trial for alleged hush money payments in New York on April 30, 2024.<\/p>\n
Justin Lane<\/p>\n
Getty Images<\/p>\n
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing a telemedicine abortion provider<\/a> that says it mails abortion pills to Fort Worth and other Texas cities, his office announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n Paxton is suing the international organization Aid Access, which is based in Austria, as well as the group\u2019s founder, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, and Dr. Remy Coeytaux, a physician based in California.<\/p>\n Paxton is accusing Coeytaux of mailing abortion pills to Texas, where abortion is illegal except in rare cases.<\/p>\n \u201cRadicals sending abortion-inducing drugs into our state will be held accountable for ending innocent life,\u201d Paxton said in a statement.<\/p>\n Aid Access and its physicians did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. On its website, Aid Access said it works<\/a> \u201cwith U.S. based abortion providers in so called shield law states.\u201d Shield laws<\/a> are designed to protect providers of abortion and other services from out-of-state legal actions.<\/p>\n \ud83d\udfe5Election 2026\ud83d\udfe6<\/p>\n Get Star-Telegram headlines in your inbox<\/a>. <\/p>\n Abortion has been largely illegal<\/a> in Texas since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the legal precedent established in Roe v. Wade, allowing individual states to regulate access to abortion. Abortion is only legal in Texas when a pregnant person \u201chas a life-threatening physical condition\u201d arising from the pregnancy.<\/p>\n But many people have continued accessing abortions through organizations like Aid Access and other groups, which send abortion pills through the mail. Research published in 2025<\/a> found that between July 1, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2024, Aid Access provided 118,338 medication abortion pill packs, the majority to states like Texas with an abortion ban.<\/p>\n Most medication abortions involve the use of two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol. The first drug, mifepristone, blocks hormones needed to continue a pregnancy. Misoprostol is taken 24 to 48 hours later and works by emptying the uterus. Medication abortion is different from the morning-after pill, which is a form of emergency contraception.<\/p>\n Medication abortions have become increasingly popular in the U.S. even as the total number and rate of abortion has declined in recent decades. In 2023, abortion pills were used in 63%<\/a> of U.S. abortion in the formal health care system, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute.<\/p>\n Paxton previously filed a similar lawsuit against a telemedicine abortion provider based in Delaware.<\/p>\n Related Stories from Fort Worth Star-Telegram<\/p>\n