A Texas woman is using a state law banning the transport of abortion pills to sue members of the anti-abortion organization Students for Life of America.
In the suit filed Tuesday in a Harris County district court, plaintiff Maria Puerto, a 26-year-old mother of two using a pseudonym to protect her family, alleges that four anti-abortion activists had ordered abortion medication on their phones in March 2026 outside of the Space Center Houston. The lawsuit cites, among other things, a now-expired social media post by one of the defendants captioned “Guess what we are doing? Ordering abortion pills undercover? Yep. Stay tuned.”
Known as the Woman and Child Protection Act, House Bill 7, which went into effect in December, prohibits providing an “abortion-inducing drug” to or from anyone in the state of Texas. The law is enforced by allowing almost any person, regardless of whether they have been impacted by the incident, to bring a civil suit against a provider of abortion medication. Plaintiffs may seek an injunction and a minimum of $100,000. If the person bringing the suit has no connection to the incident, the plaintiff receives $10,000, with the remainder of the award going to a charity selected by the plaintiff.
The lawsuit does not specify how the defendants violated HB 7. While the law does not explicitly bar the ordering of abortion medication, it does prohibit the transport of the drug within the state.
“What the statute says is that transporting abortion drugs from one location to another within the state is a violation of HB 7 … By the plain language of the statute, this would seem to be a violation,” Puerto’s attorney Molly Duane told The Texas Tribune. “This is the problem with writing such a confusing and vague law.”
While pregnant women cannot be prosecuted under HB 7 for actions taken to have an abortion, none of the four defendants — Kristan Mercer Hawkins, Lydia Taylor Davis, Jamie Curry and Megan Roos — were pregnant at the time, according to the lawsuit.
Duane, who is with Amplify Legal, the legal arm of advocacy group Abortion in America, said she and her client are hoping that the lawsuit will eventually surface more about what the defendants did with the abortion pills once they ordered them.
Hawkins is the president of Virginia-based Students for Life, which lobbied heavily for the passage of HB 7 last year. In a video posted to X on Tuesday, Hawkins called the lawsuit “frivolous” and a “publicity stunt,” and urged Texas Child Protective Services to investigate Puerto.
Puerto is suing for $459,782, “the average cost of raising two children from birth to age 18 in the state of Texas.” According to the lawsuit, both of Puerto’s pregnancies were unplanned and occurred despite the use of contraception, and she was unable to end the pregnancies due to the state’s abortion ban and the expenses associated with traveling out of the state. The suit also says that her first pregnancy directly resulted in her having to quit college and losing her job.
If she wins the lawsuit, Puerto would be entitled to $10,000 of the award, as she has no connection to the defendants. According to a Tuesday statement by Abortion in America, she plans to give the remaining award to Jane’s Due Process, a nonprofit that helps young Texans confidentially access abortion and birth control.
In an essay she published Tuesday, Puerto said Texas laws regulating her pregnancy effectively controlled her future, and described the financial struggle she has faced as a result.
“I’ve filed a lawsuit against those who helped build these horrible laws—and then had the privilege to break them in an attempt to trap women like me who still need help,” Puerto wrote. A statement by Students for Life Vice President Kristi Hamrick called the suit a “backhanded compliment” and vowed to fight it in court.
A request for comment from the defendants was directed to Students for Life’s initial statement on the lawsuit.
At least two other lawsuits have been filed using HB 7, and each of those lawsuits have targeted out-of-state abortion providers and alleged that women have actually taken the abortion pills they provided. A case filed by Texas resident Jerry Rodriguez and his daughter against California-based abortion care provider Remy Coeytaux alleges Coeytaux provided the medication used to end his girlfriend’s pregnancy on two occasions. In another case, Davis v. Cooprider et al., the plaintiff accused the organization Abortion Access of providing pills to defendant Christopher Cooprider, who used them to terminate the plaintiff’s pregnancy against her will.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday does not say if the abortion medication allegedly ordered by the defendants was actually consumed.
“Texas is a strange place filled with vigilante statutes, vigilante laws that seek to turn Texans against each other,” Duane, Puerto’s attorney, said. “But if anyone should be benefiting from these legal regimes, it’s people like our client. So it was putting those two things together that might be unusual, but this is the situation that Texas has put its citizens in.”
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