Texas Man Drops Abortion-Pill Lawsuit Against Ex’s Friends (original) (raw)
life after roe Oct. 11, 2024
Texas Women Beat Abortion-Pill Lawsuit From Friend’s Ex
By ,a senior writer for the Cut who covers systems of power. She specializes in gender issues and abortion rights, which she has been covering for seven years. Her work has also appeared in The Lily, Insider, Cosmopolitan, GEN by Medium, and Refinery29, among other outlets.
Photo: Phil Walter/Getty Images
A Texas man has dropped his wrongful-death lawsuit against three women who he alleged helped his ex-wife terminate a pregnancy with abortion pills, in what was the first case of its kind since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
In March 2023, Marcus Silva sued two of his ex-wife’s friends, Amy Carpenter and Jackie Noyola, as well as local abortion-rights activist Aracely Garcia. Silva accused them of murder for allegedly helping his former partner get abortion medication and sought millions of dollars in damages. (Silva’s ex-wife was not named as a defendant in the suit.)
In a countersuit, Carpenter and Noyola called Silva a “serial emotional abuser” who knew about his former partner’s plans to terminate her pregnancy and did not intervene, with the goal of using the information against her.
Jonathan Mitchell, the architect of SB8, the Texas law that allows residents to sue anyone they suspect of “aiding and abetting” an abortion, represented Silva in the suit. The former Texas solicitor general has represented other men seeking to file legal action against former partners who terminated their pregnancies as well as former president Donald Trump. Silva dropped his lawsuit three days after a judge refused his request to delay the trial, which was set to begin on Monday, and in doing so agreed not to try to bring a case again.
“This case was about using the legal system to harass us for helping our friend, and scare others out of doing the same,” Carpenter said in a statement. “After two years of being entangled in Mitchell and Silva’s campaign of abusive litigation, we were ready to fight this baseless suit in court. But the claims were dropped because they had nothing. We did nothing wrong, and we would do it all again.”
A trio of overlapping abortion bans has made terminating a pregnancy illegal in Texas except in cases of certain medical emergencies (but this doesn’t happen in practice, according to patients who’ve been denied care and have unsuccessfully sued the state). Anyone who performs an abortion or helps an abortion seeker risks up to life in prison, in addition to a civil penalty of no less than $100,000. Noneof the defendants named in Silva’s lawsuit were criminally charged. Under Texas law, self-managing an abortion is not illegal, and abortion seekers are explicitly exempted from prosecution and civil liability. That hasn’t stopped overzealous prosecutors from bringing charges against patients that were ultimately dropped.
Joanna Grossman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University in Texas, previously told the Cut that Silva’s lawsuit was baseless. Wrongful-death lawsuits must involve deaths caused by someone who, either intentionally or recklessly, engaged in an activity or behavior that is legally wrong. But because self-inducing an abortion isn’t illegal, the conduct at the heart of Silva’s lawsuit was not wrongful, and the legal theory behind his claims didn’t hold water. The courts seemed to agree. In the spring, a Texas appeal court ruled that Silva didn’t have a right to compel evidence from his ex-wife. He took the case up to the Texas Supreme Court, which declined to overturn the decision in June.
In his lawsuit, Silva alleged that his ex-wife learned she was pregnant in July 2022 and concealed it from him. Notably, court records show she had filed for divorce two months earlier, in May 2022, although it wasn’t finalized until February 2023. According to photos of his ex-wife’s purported text messages, which were included in the lawsuit, she told the defendants: “I know either way he will use it against me. 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.”
Silva claimed his ex-wife planned with two friends to illegally obtain abortion pills to terminate the pregnancy. According to the lawsuit, the friends shared a link to Aid Access, which ships abortion pills to the United States from overseas, in a group chat. They ultimately obtained the medication in Houston, the lawsuit alleged, and had a third woman deliver the pills to Silva’s ex-wife. The photos of the ex-wife’s purported text-message exchanges suggested she was able to self-manage the abortion at home in July.
In their countersuit, Carpenter and Noyola said Silva “wanted to destroy” his ex-wife’s life and, by extension, theirs for helping her leave the marriage. In exchange for Silva dropping his lawsuit, the two women agreed to also drop their case.
“While we are grateful that this fraudulent case is finally over, we are angry for ourselves and others who have been terrorized for the simple act of supporting a friend who is facing abuse,” Noyola said in a statement. “No one should ever have to fear punishment, criminalization, or a lengthy court battle for helping someone they care about.”
The Cut offers an online tool you can use to search by Zip Code for professional providers, including clinics, hospitals, and independent OB/GYNs, as well as for abortion funds, transportation options, and information for remote resources like receiving the abortion pill by mail. For legal guidance, contact Repro Legal Helpline at 844-868-2812 or the Abortion Defense Network.
Texas Women Beat Abortion-Pill Lawsuit From Friend’s Ex