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California Governor Gavin Newsom rejects Louisiana’s request extradition doctor The Golden State native was accused of mailing abortion pills to a woman.
Louisiana has some of the strictest The country’s abortion lawsy and its Republican governor, Jeff Landry, wrote to the Newsom administration earlier this week to “bring this California doctor to justice.”
But Newsom Request rejected He issued a blunt statement on his official press office’s X account on Wednesday.
“Louisiana’s request is denied,” Newsom said. “My position on this has been clear since 2022: We will not allow extremist politicians from other states to come into California and try to punish doctors based on accusations that they provide reproductive health care.”
“Not today. Not ever,” he added. “We will never be complicit in Trump’s war on women.”
San Francisco Bay Area doctor Remy Coito faces criminal charges for using abortion pills to perform abortions, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Muriel announced Tuesday. If convicted, the doctor could face up to 50 years in prison and a fine, Muriel said.
Court documents show Coeytaux is accused of mailing mifepristone and misoprostol in 2023 to a Louisiana woman who sought the drugs through Aid Access, a European online telemedicine service. The woman took the pills in combination to end her pregnancy, investigators wrote in the complaint, which said authorities identified Coito as the sender.
in a statement The Independent, The Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy group that represented Coito against the civil charges, stressed that the criminal charges in Louisiana were an allegation.
“While we cannot comment on the matter itself, one thing is clear – Louisiana is pursuing doctors suspected of harming women while enforcing abortion bans, putting women’s lives at risk every day,” said Nancy Northup, the group’s president.
Landry said in a statement Tuesday that Louisiana has a “zero-tolerance policy for those who subvert our laws, seek to harm women and promote abortion.”
“I know Gavin Newsom supports all forms of abortion, but that doesn’t work in Louisiana,” Landry said. “We are unapologetically pro-life.”
Louisiana bans abortion at all stages of pregnancy, including rape or incest, and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned decades of Louisiana precedent, revoking the constitutional right to abortion. Roe v. Wade June 2022.
Exemptions are available when there is a significant risk of death or injury to the patient if the pregnancy continues and when the fetus has fatal abnormalities.
Last year, state lawmakers passed additional restrictions for out-of-state prescribers and reclassified mifepristone and misoprostol as controlled dangerous substances.
The case surrounding Coito is the second time Louisiana has sought out-of-state doctors under abortion restrictions. In Louisiana, doctors convicted of providing abortions face up to 15 years in prison and a $200,000 fine.
The doctor is also the subject of a separate federal lawsuit filed in July in Texas, where a man accused the doctor of illegally providing abortion pills to his girlfriend.
Reporting by the Associated Press