Texas has sued a New York official for refusing to take action against an abortion provider, teeing up a state-versus-state battle that is widely expected to end up before the US supreme court.
Ken Paxton, Texas’s attorney general, has petitioned the New York state supreme court to order a county clerk to enforce a fine against Dr Margaret Carpenter, a New York doctor accused of mailing abortion pills across state lines.
Paxton accused Carpenter last year of mailing abortion pills to a Texas woman in defiance of Texas’s ban on virtually all abortions. After Carpenter failed to show up in a Texas court, a judge ordered her to pay more than