A Texas woman is using a state law banning the transportation of abortion pills to sue members of the anti-abortion organization Students for Life of America.
In the complaint filed Tuesday in a Harris County district court, plaintiff Maria Puerto, a 26-year-old mother of two using an alias to protect her family, alleges that four anti-abortion activists ordered abortion drugs on their phones in March 2026 outside the Space Center in Houston. The lawsuit cites, among other things, a now-expired social media post from one of the defendants titled “Guess what we do? Secretly ordering abortion pills? Yes. Stay tuned.”
Known as the Woman and Child Protection Act, House Bill 7, which took effect in December, prohibits the furnishing of an “abortion-inducing drug” to or from any person in the state of Texas. The law is enforced by allowing almost anyone, whether or not they were affected by the incident, to bring a civil action against a supplier of abortion medications. Plaintiffs can seek an injunction and a minimum of $100,000. If the person filing the lawsuit has no connection to the incident, the plaintiff receives $10,000, with the rest of the reward going to a charity of the plaintiff’s choosing.
The lawsuit does not specify how the defendants violated HB 7. Although the law does not explicitly prohibit the ordering of abortion medications, it prohibits transporting the medication within the state.
“What the law says is that transporting abortifacient drugs from one place to another within the state is a violation of HB 7…Based on the plain language of the law, it would appear to be a violation,” Puerto attorney Molly Duane told the Texas Tribune. “That’s the problem with writing such a confusing and vague law. »
Although pregnant women cannot be prosecuted under HB 7 for actions taken to procure 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 works for Amplify Legal, the legal arm of the advocacy group Abortion in America, said she and her client hope 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 pushed 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 claims $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 terminate her pregnancies due to the state’s ban on abortion and expenses associated with out-of-state travel. The lawsuit also says her first pregnancy directly caused her to leave college and lose her job.
If she wins the case, Puerto would be entitled to a $10,000 reward because she has no connection to the defendants. According to a statement released Tuesday by Abortion in America, it plans to donate the remaining prize to Jane’s Due Process, a nonprofit organization that helps young Texans gain confidential access to abortion and birth control.
In an essay she published Tuesday, Puerto said Texas laws governing her pregnancy effectively controlled her future and described the financial difficulties she faced as a result.
“I took legal action against those who helped create these horrible laws, and then had the privilege of breaking them in an attempt to entrap women like me who still need help,” Puerto wrote. In a statement, Students for Life Vice President Kristi Hamrick called the lawsuit a “backhanded compliment” and vowed to fight it in court.
A request for comment from the defendants related to Students for Life’s initial statement on the lawsuit.
At least two other lawsuits were filed using HB 7, and each of those lawsuits targeted out-of-state abortion providers and alleged that the women actually took the abortion pills they provided. A lawsuit filed by Texas resident Jerry Rodriguez and his daughter against California-based abortion care provider Remy Coeytaux alleges that Coeytaux provided the medication used to terminate his girlfriend’s pregnancies on two separate 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 complaint filed Tuesday does not specify whether the abortion medications allegedly ordered by the defendants were actually consumed.
“Texas is a strange place filled with vigilante statutes, vigilante laws that seek to pit Texans against each other,” said Duane, Puerto’s attorney. “But if anyone should benefit from these legal schemes, it’s people like our client. So it’s the combination of those two things that may be unusual, but that’s the situation that Texas has put its citizens in.”
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