On Wednesday, Texas lawmakers passed an alarming anti-abortion bill that will allow private citizens to sue anyone who manufactures, distributes, or provides abortion pills in or to the state for $100,000. The measure now goes to the desk of Governor Greg Abbott, who never met a piece of anti-abortion legislation he didn’t sign into law.
Texas already has one of the strictest abortion bans in the country, prohibiting the procedure except in virtually nonexistent, narrowly defined medical emergencies. But abortion pills have continued to flow into the state anyway, allowing people to safely and effectively self-manage terminating their pregnancies in private. (The state’s overlapping bans explicitly exempt abortion seekers from prosecution.) In an attempt to stop mifepristone and misoprostol from reaching these abortion seekers, lawmakers introduced House Bill 7, which is modeled after Senate Bill 8, Texas’s infamous bounty-hunter law that effectively ended abortion access in the state nine months before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. HB7 is also strikingly similar to Senate Bill 2880, which failed to pass this year during the regular legislative session.
I spoke with Elizabeth Sepper, a reproductive-rights expert and professor of law at the University of Texas, Austin, about what lawmakers want to achieve through HB7, its implications beyond Texas, and how it opens the door for bad actors to harass providers and helpers in the courts.
Tell me about House Bill 7 and what it generally does.
HB7 is a bounty-hunter provision. It creates the opportunity for plaintiffs of all kinds to sue a company or a person who has distributed abortion drugs in the state of Texas, with very stiff penalties for any defendant who loses a lawsuit. Fundamentally, HB7 is SB2880, which failed to pass during the regular session. The legislature clearly spent time sanding down some of the rough edges and the most clearly unconstitutional parts.
What are the actual risks here to abortion seekers and any regular people who help them?
The law does exclude bringing lawsuits against any person who has taken medication abortion, so pregnant people can’t be sued under this act. Pregnant people also can’t be deposed. Under the old Texas abortion law from the early 20th century, pregnant women got dragged into a police station and into court. They couldn’t be criminally prosecuted, but they were still hounded into providing witness testimony. This provision is something of a safeguard against that.
But the risks are high for ordinary people who help abortion seekers. For example, if someone traveled to New Mexico and brought back medication abortion for a friend, that could invite a lawsuit along with $100,000 in a damage payout to the plaintiff, plus attorneys’ fees. I do think harassing litigation is a real concern that the bill heightens. It creates incentives for folks to come into court and file complaints that could be essentially fishing expeditions. It really ties the hands of anyone sued. They’re not allowed to use some of the normal processes that could bring harassing litigation to an end. They’re not allowed to recover their attorneys’ fees, even if they win. It opens the door of the courts to harass people who are advocates for abortion in Texas, or are physicians suspected in any way of sending abortion pills into the state.
The measure says that shield laws from other states are not a defense in Texas. What does this mean for providers?
Because we have a federal system, states are free to have their own laws, regulations, and causes of action available to their citizens. What this law says is that a plaintiff can sue a New York doctor, for example, in Texas courts and get a court order ordering the doctor to pay $100,000. HB7 says that the provider cannot bring a cause of action in a place like New York, even though there’s a provision in New York law that now says you can get that money back. That does seem to set up a heightened conflict between Texas and more abortion-friendly states. Effectively, Texas is saying, Our courts can say your laws aren’t valid in your own state. That does seem to be constitutionally problematic.
What about abortion-pill manufacturers?
One of the targets of this bill is companies that manufacture medication abortion, and it does set very specific requirements for what they need to do: Develop and implement policies that will prevent their pills from going into Texas and being used for illegal abortions. This new bill says they have to take reasonable precautions to ensure that they don’t violate it.
Do you think these pharma companies are deep-pocketed enough to be willing to fight these lawsuits, or that they were expecting this type of attack? Or is this the type of bill that could spook corporations into pulling back around abortion pills in general?
I think it is meant to spook manufacturers so that they limit the ability of, say, a New York physician to send their pills into Texas. It’ll be interesting to see how the manufacturers react. Do they keep on distributing pills into Texas or are they deterred? Beyond that, we know we have organizations outside the United States that a lot of women depend on to access medication abortions. I suspect that they will not stand down. Ultimately, does this move the needle for the anti-abortion movement? Do they succeed in reducing access to medication abortion? I think they’re actually split on whether this is going to be an effective tool.
How does HB7 fit into Texas’s larger anti-abortion efforts? According to Guttmacher, lawmakers introduced 19 bills to restrict abortion access just in the two back-to-back special legislative sessions these past few weeks.
Texas is now more aggressively trying to limit abortion outside its borders. There’s been talk around prohibiting Texas residents from seeking abortions in other states, which would create a number of constitutional problems. There’s been talk of travel bans meant to prohibit the transportation of a pregnant person across state lines or through certain cities, right? We’ve seen those ordinances. But then there’s the question of what to do when so much is coming through the mail into the state. This is an attempt to stop some of the flow by creating a legal threat for manufacturers and prescribers of medication abortion. It’s probably just one of the strategies that we’ll be seeing in the coming years to try to extend the reach of Texas’s abortion bans out of state.
Should we be worried about other anti-abortion lawmakers replicating this legislation elsewhere?
Possibly. We’ve seen a lot of innovation out of Texas in the abortion-ban space, and legislators in other states are more than happy to file these kinds of bills — especially if the statute gets tested in any meaningful way. That said, we didn’t see SB8 spread so widely. Maybe because the Supreme Court very shortly thereafter overturned Roe v. Wade. So we may see other states come back in 2026 and enact something like HB7.
What’s next in the process?
Everyone would be quite surprised if Governor Abbott did not sign this bill. We can expect it to go into effect around December, three months from when the legislative session ended. Then we’ll see what happens. One possibility is that Jonathan Mitchell, who has been very enterprising in his use of the Texas and federal courts on an anti-abortion crusade, will find someone to file a lawsuit under HB7. I’d be surprised if we didn’t see some movement here. But as I said, SB8 didn’t tend to spread to other states, but it also didn’t result in lots of lawsuits. Medical providers stopped performing abortions, and so we just didn’t see the opportunity. But we know that lots of people are mailing medication abortion into Texas. We know people are distributing it. So if anti-abortion groups can figure out who those individuals are — and, you know, they will have their suspicions — we’ll see a series of lawsuits filed under HB7.
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.