Louisiana has some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, including banning prescribing mifepristone for an abortion. The D.A. for West Baton Rouge, Tony Clayton, got a grand jury to indict a New York physician, Dr. Margaret Carpenter, for prescribing mifepristone for a teenager in Louisiana who took it on advice of her mother. This opens a whole can of worms.
First, New York has a shield law that protects New York doctors who provide abortion pills and certain other services to out-of-state patients. The law prohibits state officials from cooperating with other states trying to prosecute someone in New York for an act that is legal in New York. It also directs state officials to flatly refuse to extradite anyone indicted in another state for an act that is legal in New York.
This case is going to end up in John Roberts' lap sooner or later. Among other things, it will test state-shield laws. It also has other far-reaching implications, way beyond abortion, because it attempts to extend one jurisdiction's power to another, distant jurisdiction. New York bans the sale of AK-47s and other assault weapons, some of which are legal in Texas. Suppose a Texas gun store sells an AK-47 to someone in Dallas, and that weapon later kills someone in New York. Can New York indict the gun store's owner for violating New York law? There are a large number of things that are legal in some states but illegal in others, and if states can enforce their laws on other states, well, it gets pretty complicated.
And this doesn't even begin to touch on the Internet, which allows websites to be visible worldwide. Can Saudi Arabia indict or sue a California winery for having a webpage that sells wine and is accessible in Saudi Arabia, thus violating that country's total ban on alcohol? Can Austria indict or sue a bookstore in Chicago for having a webpage selling the original version of Mein Kampf, which is illegal in Austria? A list of webpages that are illegal in some country could get quite long very fast. And as soon as Canada finally gets around to outlawing electoral-vote.com, it could make all of our readers into felons. (V)