Pro-life advocates have spent years combatting the rising surge of chemical abortion drugs, which now make up over 60% of abortions in the United States. Admirable efforts have been made to expose the dangers of the pill, as well as the consequences that mail-order abortion is enabling nationwide: coercion and abuse.

Unfortunately, these measures have only been mildly effective in changing public opinion and enacting meaningful protections for babies and moms.

Now, some state leaders are beginning to execute perhaps the only meaningful method of reinstating basic safeguards on the drugs: state litigation.

In early February, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against abortion drug provider Aid Access and a California doctor, who allegedly defied Texas’ pro-life laws in mailing dangerous chemical abortion drugs to Texas residents. Paxton accused Aid Access of facilitating abortion trafficking that targeted Texas citizens. A win in Paxton’s lawsuit is essential for curbing abortion drug trafficking, protecting women, and protecting and strengthening state laws that promote the common good.

He filed the lawsuit under a controversial new Texas law called HB 7, which prohibits the “creation and distribution of abortion-inducing drugs in Texas.” HB 7 was designed to protect Texas residents from out-of-state abortion pill trafficking. The bill does not allow lawsuits against women who take the abortion drugs for abortions or miscarriages. It does stipulate that plaintiffs who win their cases could be awarded a maximum of $100,000 in damages, though plaintiffs can only retain the full amount if they are directly related to the unborn child lost to chemical abortion.

Paxton’s lawsuit and HB 7 come at a critical time. According to the Texas Tribune, “there have been estimates that as many as 19,000 orders for abortion pills from Texas were placed after Texas’ initial abortion ban was enacted. After Texas banned abortion, many turned to online pharmacies and out-of-state providers to obtain medication to terminate their pregnancies despite the bans.”

Pro-abortion activists have repeatedly celebrated mail-order abortion as a boon to those in states that prohibit chemical abortion drugs. What they fail to realize – or intentionally ignore – is that many obstetricians and gynecologists have pointed to increased harm to women and difficulty for healthcare providers when activists undermine state law.

A new report found that 10.93% of women who take mifepristone experience a serious adverse event, such as sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other dangerous side effects. This indicates that tens of thousands of women nationwide are experiencing serious consequences from taking mifepristone.

In states such as Texas where mifepristone is banned, some women may still be too afraid to seek necessary medical care that the state has no ability to punish them for needing. Because many of these women would likely not have had an in-person doctor’s visit before acquiring them through the mail (the current Food and Drug Administration dispensing requirements do not require an in-person visit), many might take the pills without knowing if they have a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy or that they are too far along gestationally and the pills could thus be life-threatening.

Even worse, given the high rates of abortion coercion, abusive partners or bad actors could poison women with mifepristone. This has happened repeatedly across America since mail-order abortion was legalized.

Without an in-person visit, women suffering from any or all of these complications would be rushed into Texas emergency rooms, leaving Texas healthcare providers to suffer the burden that abortion traffickers placed on them.

Paxton’s lawsuit serves as an important reminder that not only does abortion trafficking endanger women and overburden state healthcare facilities, but it also undermines state law at the expense of the common good.

Just laws are intended to promote the common good, to establish order and harmony through clear, thoughtful guardrails that shape public morality. Texas laws protecting unborn life, and similarly protecting women, are intended to promote such public morality. They rest on the scientific consensus that life begins at conception, that mifepristone ends that life, and repeatedly proven data showing that mifepristone subjects women to serious harms, especially if it is available via mail.

Abortion traffickers seek to undermine this law at the expense of public harmony and the common good, resulting in the loss of life, traumatized women, and a legal system that state residents perceive as a joke.

Thankfully, Paxton isn’t the only state attorney general taking action against abortion drug trafficking. Just recently, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill sued the FDA over mail-order abortion policies that undermine state law in Louisiana (and many other states such as Texas), though a federal judge put the lawsuit on hold earlier this month. Paxton himself has also sued providers in New York and Delaware.

Lawsuits like these are essential, especially given the Trump administration’s refusal to take meaningful steps to curb the growing chemical abortion drug crisis nationwide.