California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law on Wednesday that aims to stop other states from prosecuting doctors and pharmacists who mail abortion pills to patients in places where the procedure is banned.
California already has a law protecting doctors who provide abortions from out-of-state judgements. But that law was designed to protect doctors who treat patients from other states who travel to California.
The new law goes further by forbidding authorities from cooperating with out-of-state investigations into doctors who mail abortion pills to patients in other states. It also bans bounty hunters or bail agents from apprehending doctors, pharmacists and patients in California and transporting them to another state to stand trial for providing an abortion.
Other states, including New York and Massachusetts, have similar laws. But California’s law also bars state-based social media companies — like Facebook — from complying with out-of-state subpoenas, warrants or other requests for records to discover the identity of patients seeking abortion pills.
States aren’t allowed to be sanctuary for criminals from other states. I’m not clear on whether active pursuit is required, but if the governor of Texas produces a legal warrant for a person to the governor of California, they are required to act on it. They may not have to perform a manhunt, butbifnthe person is stopped for speeding or something, they would likely be required to arrest them. The only exception is that a state can keep a person for criminal prosecution and imprisonment first, which isn’t relevant for an out of state abortion.
The state could argue that a warrant for performing an abortion isn’t legal as the requesting state had no jurisdiction where the supposed crime occurred. This isn’t required by the law though, so it may be up to the arrested person’s counsel to raise that argument, keeping all the risk on the person still.
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