ABORTION

 MSN -  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s lawsuit against a New York doctor is one step in a longer battle against people who facilitate abortions for Texans, according to both abortion advocates and opponents. The case against the New York physician, who allegedly met with a Texas woman over a telehealth appointment and prescribed her with medication abortion pills, is poised to become a test other states' “shield laws,” which are designed to protect medical providers from out-of-state bans.

Media reports have called Paxton’s lawsuit a “new battlefront” and the breakdown of a “fragile truce between the states." But the lawsuit also wasn’t a surprise, both abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion forces say.“This is exactly the kind of thing that we were expecting one of the anti-abortion states to try,” Marc Hearron, the interim associate litigation director at the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in an interview. “This is exactly what we would have predicted.”