Newsom Protects Unethical Doctor who Broke Texas Law

A San Francisco, California doctor is being sued by a Texas resident for prescribing abortion pills that ended the life of his unborn child. This is the first suit using Texas’s new controversial anti-abortion law that allows citizens to sue medical providers for performing an abortion or aiding in the termination of a pregnancy.

Texas House Bill 7 recently went into effect and allows Texas citizens to sue anyone who “manufactures, distributes, mails, transports, delivers, prescribes, or provides” abortion drugs, which are subsequently used by a Texas resident.

The lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff Jerry Rodriguez and his girlfriend Kendal Garza conceived a child in 2024. Mrs. Garza was still married yet legally separated from her husband for several years. It was the husband, Mr. Garza, who allegedly ordered the abortion pills from Dr. Remy Coeytaux and pressured his estranged wife, who was now three months pregnant, to take the pills and end the life of the unborn child. Rodriguez and Kendal Garza then conceived another child in October 2024. For reasons undisclosed in the lawsuit filing, Mrs. Garza took the same abortion pills and ended another unborn baby’s life. Afterward, Mrs. Garza informed Rodriguez that she buried their son but did not disclose where.

Perhaps the most damaging evidence in the lawsuit filing comes from the electronic receipt for the abortion pills. The filing alleges that the purchase’s description included the words “Aed axes Kendal Garza.” The prosecution claims the two words “Aed axes” are homophones for “Aid Access,” which is “an organization that illegally ships abortion-inducing drugs into jurisdictions where abortion has been outlawed.” If true, this suggests that both the buyer and seller, Dr. Coeytaux, were aware that the transaction was illegal.

This is not the first time Dr. Coeytaux has been linked to Aid Access. He allegedly used the organization to ship abortion drugs into Louisiana as well. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has attempted to extradite Dr. Coeytaux to the state, but Governor Gavin Newsom has invoked a new “shield law” in California which aims to protect abortion providers from interstate prosecution. “Louisiana’s request is denied,” Newsom said in a statement. “We will not allow extremist politicians from other states to reach into California and try to punish doctors based on allegations that they provided reproductive health care services. Not today. Not ever.”

But who is Dr. Remy Coeytaux? According to his website, he is “a solo practitioner, without employees,” and he is not affiliated with any provider network or insurance plan. He charges $150 for every fifteen minutes of his services. Interestingly, the lawsuit claims that Mr. Garza paid Dr. Coeytaux a total of $150 for his services. Either there was a 15-minute consultation, which seems drastically insufficient in determining if it is even safe for the mother to terminate a pregnancy, and the pills were free, or there was no consultation at all, and the money exchanged was solely for the abortion drugs. Neither option speaks well of Dr. Coeytaux’s medical practitioner skills.

Furthermore, Dr. Coeytaux professes to practice “integrative medicine”, which he claims is defined using several elements. One element states the doctor should consider “all factors that influence health, wellness and disease, including mind, spirit and community as well as body.” Considering the patient’s husband allegedly purchased the abortion pills, and even that may have been after, at most, a short phone or video call, Dr. Coeytaux is breaking this tenet of his medical belief. One would have to work personally and for an extended amount of time to understand her body, mind, and spirit holistically.

Another element of integrative medicine, as adopted by Dr. Coeytaux, is that “good medicine should be based in good science, be inquiry driven, and be open to new paradigms.” Abortion pill prescriptions in the United States are most often the drug Mifepristone. Just last year, a group of doctors and medical organizations known as the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine took a lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court claiming that the FDA removed safeguards around the drug, including allowing it to be mailed to patients without oversight, in a way that was “arbitrary and capricious” and that there was no scientific justification for their actions. Unfortunately the case was dismissed due to procedural issues of standing, but the facts about the drug were not disputed in court. If a large group of the medical community feels that wide use and distribution of Mifepristone requires more scientific validation, a doctor claiming that “good medicine should be based in good science” should not be prescribing such a drug, especially again, to a patient he has never met.

Dr. Coeytaux’s medical practice is unethical at best and illegal at worst. For Gov. Newsom and California politicians to protect and condone his actions is reprehensible. This “shield law” that protects abortion providers who break the laws of other states should be questioned and brought up to a court. The Interstate Commerce Clause in the Constitution allows the federal Congress to regulate and criminalize actions that cross state lines; thus, a potential case would have some merit.