Texas man files legal action to probe ex-partner’s out-of-state abortion
The previously unreported petition reflects a potential new antiabortion strategy to block women from ending their pregnancies in states where abortion is legal.
As soon as Collin Davis found out his ex-partner was planning to travel to Colorado to have an abortion in late February, the Texas man retained a high-powered antiabortion attorney — who court records show immediately issued a legal threat.
If the woman proceeded with the abortion, even in a state where the procedure remains legal, Davis would seek a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the abortion and “pursue wrongful-death claims against anyone involved in the killing of his unborn child,” the lawyer wrote in a letter, according to records.
The U.S. fight over abortion
Texas Woman In Legal Peril For Out-Of-State Abortion
The Washington Post reports:As soon as Collin Davis found out his ex-partner was planning to travel to Colorado to have an abortion in late February, the Texas man retained a high-powered antiabortion attorney — who court records show immediately issued a legal threat.
Now, Davis has disclosed his former partner’s abortion to a state district court in Texas, asking for the power to investigate what his lawyer characterizes as potentially illegal activity in a state where almost all abortions are banned.
Davis’s petition was filed under Texas’s Rule 202 by Jonathan Mitchell, a prominent antiabortion attorney known for devising new and aggressive legal strategies to crack down on abortion.
Mitchell appeared here in 2022 for his lawsuit seeking to block insurance coverage for PrEP medications because they “encourage homosexual behavior.”
Also in 2022, Mitchell filed six separate lawsuits seeking to dismantle LGBTQ rights, including the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling.
Jonathan Mitchell—one of Trump’s top lawyers—is asking Texas to investigate a woman who traveled to Colorado for a legal abortion. Mitchell represents the woman’s ex-boyfriend, who’s accusing her of breaking the law by traveling out of state to terminate. https://t.co/OIsSiMbJbF — Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) May 3, 2024
TX Judge:
Insurance Coverage For HIV PrEP Pill Violates Religious Rights And “Enables Homosexual Behavior”
The Advocate reports:
A federal judge in Texas has ruled partially in favor of plaintiffs that argued that requiring insurance companies to cover medications for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, violates their rights on religious grounds.
Jonathan Mitchell, who founded a one-person law firm in 2018 intending to challenge decades-old Supreme Court rulings, brought the case Braidwood Management Inc., vs. Xavier Becerra, in the Northern District of Texas.
There, United States district judge Reed O’Conner ruled in favor of plaintiffs who argued that paying for insurance that covers PrEP violates their religious beliefs because PrEP “enable[s and encourages] homosexual behavior.”
Read the full article.
The Dallas Morning News reported in July:
Right now, a half dozen cases on everything from insurance coverage for HIV prevention to employment discrimination and same-sex marriage are wending their way through state and federal courts here.
Their outcomes could radically alter rights for LGBTQ people in Texas and across the country.
The lawsuits all have one thing in common: former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell.
Best known as the man behind the state law that allows Texans to file civil lawsuits against people who help pregnant people get abortions, Mitchell opened up a law firm in Austin four years ago with the goal of systematically dismantling decades of court rulings he believes depart from the U.S. Constitution.
A federal judge in Texas has ruled partially in favor of plaintiffs who argue that paying for insurance that covers PrEP violates their religious beliefs because the drug “enable[s and encourages] homosexual behavior.”
https://t.co/8dXBPjR9VZ — The Advocate (@TheAdvocateMag) September 7, 2022
O’Connor, a George W. Bush appointee, regularly rules against Democratic administrations and Democrat-backed policies — leading conservative plaintiffs to seek him out to judge their cases.
He has ruled against the ACA or ACA-related policies multiple times. — Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner (@chrisgeidner)
September 7, 2022 O’Connor also has a history of anti-LGBTQ rulings, both as to marriage and Title IX’s sex discrimination ban.
He also has a history of overstepping, even in this era, and his rulings have repeatedly been reversed on appeal or effectively overturned by contrary SCOTUS opinions. — Chris
“Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner (@chrisgeidner) September 7, 2022
Once again, the exact thing we said was going to happen, vis-à-vis the horrific Texas legislation allowing people to sue anyone who “aids and abets” an abortion, is happening.
At some point this year, a Texas woman made the decision to run off to Colorado to seek an abortion in order to avoid giving birth to the purported child of one Collin Davis.
Given what we know about this Collin Davis character, this is the smartest possible decision she could have made, as having his child would have meant being chained to him for life in some capacity — and he sure seems like a goddamned nightmare.
In February, when Davis found out that she was considering this, he immediately retained Jonathan Mitchell, who is the architect of the Texas law and also the absolute spitting image of Robert, the haunted Edwardian-era doll who destroys the lives of Florida tourists who disrespect him.
Did I lie?
Mitchell then sent her a “legal threat” meant to keep her from having the abortion. It did not work (thank goodness).
Now that his ex has had the abortion, Collin and Mitchell are still hoping to ruin her life by filing a petition to investigate her and anyone he believes aided and abetted her in getting the abortion.
Via Washington Post:
In the Davis case, Mitchell is attempting to depose the woman who had the abortion, along with several other people he writes may be “complicit” in the abortion.
If deposed, they would be asked about others involved in the abortion, including any abortion funds or any other entities that provided financial support, according to court records.
They would also have to provide all documentation relevant to the abortion.
“Mr. Davis expects to be able to better evaluate the prospects for legal success after deposing [the people listed], and discovering the identity of their co-conspirators and accomplices,” Mitchell wrote in the complaint, which he filed on March 22.
He is able to do this because of Texas’s Rule 202, which allows for an investigation prior to filing a lawsuit.
Davis, who we don’t know isn’t related somehow to Texas oil tycoon Cullen Davis who allegedly killed his stepdaughter and attempted to have his soon-to-be-ex-wife and the judge in their divorce proceedings killed, is clearly just trying to continue to exercise control over his ex and everyone she knows — because that is what men like him do.
That is, in fact, exactly why it was a good idea for her to have an abortion.
He’s not the first man to try and pull this either.
In March of last year, a man named Marcus Silva was also represented by Jonathan Mitchell.
Silva was very open — at least to his ex — about the fact that he was using the threat of the lawsuit to force her to continue having sex with him and cleaning his house.
MARCUS SILVA: You’re not considering what can happen to you if I continue to do this sh*t for the next 40 years.
BRITTNI SILVA: Marcus, I’m not gonna be f*cking blackmailed into having sex with you.
MARCUS SILVA: Then you’re just gonna have your fcking life destroyed in every fcking way that you can imagine to where you want to blow your f*cking brains out.
What a peach!
So far, we haven’t heard from Collin Davis’s ex, but I think we can all be pretty sure that when we do, she’ll likely have a very similar story to tell.
Any man who would sue his ex’s friends and family over helping her get an abortion is at least psychologically abusive.
I’ve always found the “Let’s do Lysistrata!” thing extremely cringe, as we no longer really live in a society in which women are regularly sexually involved with men who hold diametrically opposite views to them and also have any particular power to change anything.
Like, it is unclear what a woman going on a sex strike from their equally antiwar or pro-abortion rights partner, who has no more political power than she does, would actually accomplish.
It also presumes that all women share the same opinions on things and that sex is a favor they do for men.
I could go on about this for a bit, but I will spare you.
What I will say, however, is that if I lived in Texas (I would not live in Texas), I would be getting me to a convent, because there is no way in hell that I would trust any man in that state to not try to ruin my life if we broke up and I needed to get an abortion.
Absolutely not, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else either.
Judges decided that the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides a “right to privacy,” which protects an individual’s right to choose whether to carry their pregnancy to full-term or not.
ABORTION RIGHTS
Out-of-state travel under fire
Man asks to investigate former partner’s trip to have procedure done
A Texas man is seeking information about his former partner’s alleged out-of-state abortion, setting the stage for one of the first attempts to sue those who help Texans access the procedure in a state where it’s legal.
The man — represented by the high-profile anti-abortion lawyer Jonathan Mitchell — has asked a Texas state district court permission to investigate potentially illegal activity regarding the abortion under an unusual legal move that allows lawyers to collect supporting information ahead of filing a lawsuit.
Mitchell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Collin Davis, the man behind the sealed petition, sought legal action when he learned his former partner planned to travel to Colorado for the abortion, according to reporting by The Washington Post .
Abortion is illegal in Texas in nearly all circumstances under a trio of overlapping laws that prohibit the procedure.
Senate Bill 8, enacted in September of 2021 and known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, allows private individuals to sue anyone who performs or aids an abortion after the detection of fetal cardiac activity.
The petition posits Davis could sue under either SB8 or the state’s wrongful death statute.
The legal action is the latest attempt by antiabortion activists to stop Texas women from leaving the state to seek abortion care.
Some cities and counties have passed ordinances to ban people from using their roads to get to out-of-state clinics.
In Idaho, it’s now illegal to help a minor leave the state to terminate a pregnancy.
Testing the law
The petition isn’t Mitchell’s first attempt to test the limits of SB8, the law he’s known to have shaped.
He previously filed a case, which could go to trial later this year, on behalf of a Galveston man who wants to sue friends of his ex-wife who allegedly helped her source abortion pills.
“Fathers of aborted fetuses can sue for wrongful death in states with abortion bans, even if the abortion occurs out-of-state,” Mitchell said in a statement shared with The Washington Post .
Under state law, women who seek abortions cannot be charged, but those who “aid or abet” abortions can be.
“Mr. Davis is considering whether to sue individuals and organizations that participated in the murder of his unborn child,” Mitchell wrote in Davis’ complaint in March, according to The Washington Post.
The Center for Reproductive Rights — the legal organization representing dozens of Texas women in a court case challenging the state’s abortion bans — is representing the woman in the petition, who remains unnamed out of concern for her safety.
Marc Hearron, a lead attorney at the center, said the petition is meant to serve as a scare tactic against Texas women considering abortions across state lines.
“This is part of a broader trend that we predicted when Dobbs overturned Roe that that’s not going to be enough for the anti-abortion movement,” Hearron said. “They are not going to be OK with states getting to decide what’s legal and illegal.”
Ripple effects
The Supreme Court’s 2022 decision that overturned federal abortion protections had immediate and significant ripple effects nationwide.
Now, 21 states ban or limit the procedure, including Florida, which enacted a six-week ban on Wednesday.
States where abortion remains legal saw an influx of abortion patients from states like Texas.
The abortion fund Fund Texas Choice spent more than $560,000 on client out-of-state travel in the first nine months of 2023.
Last year, the Chicago Abortion Fund received more than 1,200 calls from Texans alone.
Hearron said his organization will file a response on behalf of the woman its representing and that it’ll likely be weeks before there’s any movement in the court.
“We have a constitutional right to travel from state to state and to access services that are legal in a state where they’re accessed,” Hearron said. “States are not allowed to trap people.”
Texas man files legal action to probe ex-partner’s out-of-state abortion
The previously unreported petition reflects a potential new antiabortion strategy to block women from ending their pregnancies in states where abortion is legal.
As soon as Collin Davis found out his ex-partner was planning to travel to Colorado to have an abortion in late February, the Texas man retained a high-powered antiabortion attorney — who court records show immediately issued a legal threat.
If the woman proceeded with the abortion, even in a state where the procedure remains legal, Davis would seek a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding the abortion and “pursue wrongful-death claims against anyone involved in the killing of his unborn child,” the lawyer wrote in a letter, according to records.
Now, Davis has disclosed his former partner’s abortion to a state district court in Texas, asking for the power to investigate what his lawyer characterizes as potentially illegal activity in a state where almost all abortions are banned.
The previously unreported petition was submitted under an unusual legal mechanism often used in Texas to investigate suspected illegal actions before a lawsuit is filed.
The petition claims Davis could sue either under the state’s wrongful-death statute or the novel Texas law known as Senate Bill 8 that allows private citizens to file suit against anyone who “aids or abets” an illegal abortion.
3 Texas women being sued by friend's ex-husband for allegedly helping her obtain abortion pills
Texas man suing friends of ex-wife for helping supply abortion pills
Marcus Silva alleges his ex and her friends illegally obtained abortion pills after becoming pregnant in July 2022, one month after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
GALVESTON, Texas -- A Texas man is suing three women under the wrongful death statute, alleging that they assisted his ex-wife in terminating her pregnancy, the first such case brought since the state's near-total ban on abortion last summer.
Marcus Silva is represented by Jonathan Mitchell, the former Texas solicitor general and architect of the state's prohibition on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, and state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park.
The lawsuit is filed in state court in Galveston County, where Silva lives.
Silva alleges that his now ex-wife learned she was pregnant in July 2022, the month after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and conspired with two friends to illegally obtain abortion-inducing medication and terminate the pregnancy.
The friends texted with the woman, sending her information about Aid Access, an international group that provides abortion-inducing medication through the mail, the lawsuit alleges.
Text messages filed as part of the complaint seem to show they instead found a way to acquire the medication in Houston, where the two women lived.
A third woman delivered the medication, the lawsuit alleges, and text messages indicate that the wife self-managed an abortion at home.
The defendants could not immediately be reached for comment. Silva's wife filed for divorce in May 2022, court records show, two months before the alleged abortion.
The divorce was finalized in February.
They share two daughters, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit relies heavily on screenshots from a group chat the ex-wife had with two friends seemingly seeking to help her terminate her pregnancy.
Her friends expressed concern that Silva would "snake his way into your head."
"I know either way he will use it against me," the pregnant woman said, according to text messages attached to the complaint. "If I told him before, which I'm not, he would use it as a way to try to stay with me. And after the fact, I know he will try to act like he has some right to the decision."
"Delete all conversations from today," one of the women later told her. "You don't want him looking through it."
The lawsuit alleges that assisting a self-managed abortion qualifies as murder under state law, which would allow Silva to sue under the wrongful death statute.
The women have not been criminally charged.
Texas' abortion laws specifically exempt the pregnant person from prosecution; the ex-wife is not named as a defendant.
The legality of abortion in Texas in July 2022 is murky.
The state's trigger law, which makes performing abortion a crime punishable by up to life in prison, did not go into effect until August.
But conservative state leaders, including Cain and Attorney General Ken Paxton, have claimed that the state's pre-Roe abortion bans, which punish anyone who performs or "furnishes the means" for an abortion by up to five years in prison, went back into effect the day Roe v. Wade was overturned in June.
The legal status of these pre-Roe statutes remains a contentious question.
In 2004, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that those laws were "repealed by implication," which U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman reaffirmed in a recent ruling.
But Cain and others have repeatedly argued that the Legislature restored those laws into effect with recent abortion legislation.
This issue went before the Texas Supreme Court, but the case was dismissed before a final ruling.
In 2021, the Legislature passed a law making it a state jail felony to provide abortion-inducing medication except under extremely specific circumstances.
Joanna Grossman, a law professor at SMU Dedman School of Law, said this lawsuit is "absurd and inflammatory."
Since the pregnant patient is protected from prosecution, there is no underlying cause of action to bring a wrongful death suit in a self-managed abortion, she said.
"But this is going to cause such fear and chilling that it doesn't matter whether Mitchell is right," Grossman said. "Who is going to want to help a friend find an abortion if there is some chance that their text messages are going to end up in the news? And maybe they're going to get sued, and maybe they're going to get arrested, and it's going to get dropped eventually, but in the meantime, they will have been terrified."
But it's possible this lawsuit could get traction, said Charles "Rocky" Rhodes, a law professor at South Texas College of Law.
"It's scary to think that you can be sued for significant damages for helping a friend undertake acts that help her have even a self-medicated abortion," Rhodes said. "Obviously, the allegations would have to be proven, but there is potentially merit to this suit under Texas' abortion laws as they exist now."
Mitchell and Cain intend to also name the manufacturer of the abortion pill as a defendant, once it is identified.
"Anyone involved in distributing or manufacturing abortion pills will be sued into oblivion," Cain said in a statement.
Silva is asking a Galveston judge to award him more than $1 million in damages and an injunction stopping the defendants from distributing abortion pills in Texas.
Galveston
JONATHAN F. M ITCHELL
Texas Bar No. 24075463
Marcus Silva
Texas law does not regard a healthy child as an injury for which a parent must be compensated but, rather, as a life with inherent dignity and profound, immeasurable value.'
Texas Supreme Court Justice Rebeca Huddle
On a woman’s plea for damages for physical pain, mental anguish, and the costs of maintaining, supporting and educating her fourth child after a doctor failed to perform a sterilization procedure
23-CV-0375
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