Will the courts continue allowing pro-abortion states like New York and Delaware to use shield laws to protect doctors who ship abortion pills into Texas and other pro-life states — undermining the Constitution’s Full Faith Clause, killing unborn babies, and putting women at serious risk of coercion and harm?
This article is a lightly edited transcript of the “Here’s the Point” podcast by Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center.
In October 2025, a New York judge dismissed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit seeking to enforce a $100,000 judgment against Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, a New York physician who prescribed abortion pills via telemedicine to a Texas woman. Then in January 2026, Ken Paxton filed a second lawsuit, this time against Delaware nurse practitioner Debra Lynch, who runs an abortion pill mill called Her Safe Harbor, a telehealth service that openly advertises mailing chemical abortion pills to all 50 states.
These cases in both New York and Delaware represent the first major legal tests of state “shield laws” — legislation designed to protect abortion providers from any accountability when they target the unborn in pro-life states. The outcome of these cases could reshape the battle over abortion and determine whether pro-life states can actually enforce laws to protect unborn children within their own borders, free from outside manipulation.
When Texas AG Ken Paxton tried to enforce a Texas judgment against an abortion provider in Ulster County, New York, county clerk Taylor Bruck refused twice, citing New York’s shield law. New York Supreme Court Justice David Gandin dismissed Paxton’s case, ruling that Carpenter’s conduct was legal in New York and protected under the state’s shield law.
The Delaware case follows a similar pattern, but with critical differences. Lynch, who founded Her Safe Harbor in June 2024, publicly acknowledged that she and her staff “mail a lot [of abortion drugs] to Texas,” and among those places Beaumont, Fulshear, Tomball, Houston, and even El Paso. After Paxton sent a cease-and-desist letter in August 2025, Lynch told media outlets that Her Safe Harbor would not change its operations and had actually seen an uptick in requests from Texans.
Paxton filed suit in January 2026, seeking injunctions prohibiting Lynch from prescribing abortion medication to Texas residents and civil penalties of at least $100,000 per violation. Delaware, like New York, has a shield law — but with crucial differences that could affect the case’s outcome.
So how should we think about this collision between state sovereignty, constitutional law, and the protection of the unborn?
First, New York shield laws in New York and Delaware represent two different strategies for undermining pro-life laws—but both are equally destructive.
New York’s shield law, enacted in 2023 and further strengthened in 2025, prohibits state officials from cooperating with out-of-state investigations, subpoenas, arrests, or extraditions related to abortion or gender-affirming care that is legal in New York. Critically, New York’s law protects providers regardless of where their patients are located, as long as the provider is physically in New York when prescribing.
Delaware also passed its shield law in 2022 and strengthened it in 2025. However, Delaware’s language differs from New York’s in one significant way: It may not explicitly protect providers whose patients are located outside of Delaware.
Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings has already signaled she’s prepared to defend the shield law, stating: “By law, Delaware does not honor anti-abortion interstate subpoenas. We are prepared to make that case in court.”
Both states frame their shield laws as protecting “reproductive rights.” But make no mistake: These laws are designed to undermine pro-life protections, while aiding and abetting the abortion industry in blue states. And 22 states now have shield laws for abortion pill providers, making it the largest legal trafficking operation of drugs designed to kill in the United States.
Second, Paxton’s lawsuits expose the constitutional crisis at the heart of shield laws — and the stakes couldn’t be higher.
The Full Faith and Credit Clause of Article IV of the Constitution requires states to recognize the “public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.” Shield laws directly challenge this constitutional requirement by refusing to enforce valid judgments from pro-life states.
Paxton argues this violates the Constitution. New York and Delaware counter that they have no obligation to enforce “extraterritorial bans” and are merely protecting legal activity within their borders. But this argument fails. The issue isn’t what providers do in their home states, it’s what they facilitate in Texas and other pro-life states by mailing abortion pills to residents in violation of that state’s law.
Most, if not all, abortion pill providers are not licensed to practice medicine in another state. They do not do in-patient consults. Abortion pills carry dangers and risks of severe bleeding, cramping, and emotional trauma, sometimes requiring hospital visits and emergency room intervention.
In some cases, men illegally obtained abortion drugs across state lines and used them to secretly poison pregnant women, causing the deaths of unborn children and hospitalizing the mothers. These aren’t just policy disagreements between Democrats and Republicans or blue states and red states, these are matters of life and death for both mother and child.
Chemical abortion now accounts for more than 70 percent of all abortions nationwide. The wide distribution of abortion pills actually means that total abortion is up since the Dobbs decision, even while many brick-and-mortar abortion clinics are closing down. Abortion is on the rise.
Third, we must recognize what’s really at stake and use the full force of law to challenge the rise of chemical abortion across this country.
Abortion isn’t healthcare. And the legalized abortion pill mill represents the greatest threat to the womb in modern times. It’s a lucrative and predatory industry, hiding behind shield laws, trading babies lives for profit.
Christians must understand that praying, preaching, and proselytizing is essential to the advancement of the Gospel and to winning the hearts and minds of the next generation in America.
But this fight will not be won without winning legal battles and without winning at the ballot box.
You do not preserve religious liberty without winning politically. You do not preserve and defend life without winning politically. You do not keep America free without winning politically. Abortion will not end if we are disengaged and watching from the sidelines.
Politics matter because policies matter because people matter. So this is a call to prayer which will ultimately lead to a call to action.
We need to pray that these cases are won in the courts. We need to demand from our public officials that they recognize the personhood of the unborn. And we need to support pregnancy centers and pro-life candidates running for office.
We don’t just need to pray. We also need to act.
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