Texas Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson, a Democrat who won office in last week’s midterm elections, says he will not use state law to pursue out-of-state doctors who mail abortion pills into Texas, according to a report by The Texas Tribune.
“The first thing I do when people ask me about abortion is point out that I’m not a legislator, and I can’t change abortion law,” Johnson told the Tribune. “What I can do is cease using Texas abortion laws as an instrument of persecution and intimidation, harassment and political showboating. All four of those things have happened.”
Texas law bans abortion except to save the mother’s life or prevent serious health risks, and doctors within the state face severe penalties for mailing abortion pills. Johnson’s predecessor, Republican Ken Paxton, had aggressively sued out-of-state doctors who prescribed and shipped abortion pills into Texas, relying on legal protections offered by blue-state “shield laws.” Paxton left the attorney general’s office to run for U.S. Senate and lost to Democrat James Talarico.
“I will not pursue the judicially absurd position that Texas law has extra territorial effect,” Johnson said. “I can honor other states’ shield laws.”
The Tribune reported that this stance is likely the first of several changes Johnson plans that would soften enforcement of the state’s abortion ban.
Governor-elect wants penalties removed
Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa, also a Democrat, cannot unilaterally repeal Texas’s abortion law, but she said in September she wants to eliminate criminal penalties facing doctors who perform abortions. Hinojosa defeated incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on November 3.
“It’s going to take more than one election to change these very extreme abortion bans in Texas. I think where we can start, I think where there is bipartisan support is to do away with the 99 years imprisonment that doctors face when they choose to terminate a pregnancy with a mother to save her life,” Hinojosa told CNN. “And, right now, doctors can be second guessed by political boards and they face 99 years in prison. And so they’re afraid to touch women, and women are having to wait till they’re at death’s door. And too many women are dying in Texas because of it. I think there’s bipartisan support to start there to do away with these criminal penalties for doctors.”
Background on the pill fight
In a medication abortion, mifepristone blocks progesterone, the hormone that sustains pregnancy; the drug misoprostol then induces contractions to expel the fetus. The Biden administration suspended the requirement that mifepristone be dispensed in person in 2021 and made that change permanent in 2023, allowing the drug to be mailed. Blue states subsequently passed shield laws protecting doctors who mail pills into states with abortion restrictions from legal consequences there.
The Guttmacher Institute estimated medication abortions made up 63 percent of all abortions within the formal U.S. healthcare system in 2023, up from 53 percent in 2020 and 39 percent in 2017 — figures that do not include pills obtained through informal networks. Guttmacher also estimated that 91,000 telehealth abortions were provided in 2025 under shield laws to people in states with abortion restrictions.
Several red states have sued out-of-state abortion providers, aiming to bring the shield-law dispute before the U.S. Supreme Court. The FDA’s mail-order policy is also facing legal challenges that have continued through the Trump administration.
Louisiana and a woman named Rosalie Markezich, who alleges her boyfriend ordered abortion pills online from California and coerced her into taking them, are suing the FDA over its mail-order rules. In May, the Supreme Court allowed the mail-order policy to remain in place while litigation continues in lower courts.
The FDA has asked courts to let the mail-order system continue while it conducts a safety review of mifepristone, which it has said it expects to complete by December, with findings to be made public by March 2027.
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