By Brendan Pierson
(Reuters) – A Texas man dropped a wrongful death lawsuit he filed last year accusing three women of helping his ex-wife obtain abortion pills, which had drawn national attention as one of the first private lawsuits brought under a state abortion law.
Jonathan Mitchell, a lawyer for plaintiff Marcus Silva, said in a filing in Galveston County, Texas on Friday that the case had been dropped because of a settlement. The case was set to go to trial next week.
Mitchell declined to comment further. A spokesperson for the defendants said Silva had not received any monetary compensation for dropping his case.
“After two years of being entangled in Mitchell and Silva’s campaign of abusive litigation, we were ready to fight this baseless suit in court,” Amy Carpenter, one of the defendants, said in a statement. “But the claims were dropped because they had nothing. We did nothing wrong, and we would do it all again.”
Silva had claimed that Carpenter, Jackie Noyola and Aracely Garcia were liable for wrongful death because they helped his ex-wife obtain abortion pills to terminate a pregnancy in July 2022. The civil lawsuit sought damages of $1 million against each woman.
Texas passed a ban on abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy in 2021, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade precedent still prevented states from criminalizing abortion.
The Texas law, which Mitchell helped create, sought to get around Roe by allowing private citizens to file wrongful death lawsuits for aiding and abetting an abortion.
The Supreme Court overturned Roe in 2022, allowing many Republican-led states to ban abortion.
Brittni Silva, who divorced her husband in February 2023, according to the lawsuit, is not a defendant and is exempt from criminal or civil liability under state law.
Marcus Silva pointed to photos of text messages apparently between Brittni Silva, Noyola and Carpenter, discussing Silva’s pregnancy and her desire to get abortion pills in Texas. Noyola and Carpenter offered links to websites where people could order the two-pill regimen, and both offered to let Silva self-manage her abortion at their homes, the text message screenshots showed.
The lawsuit alleged that Garcia facilitated the delivery of the pills to the Houston area, where the Silvas lived.
Noyola said in a statement on Friday that she and the other defendants had been trying to help their friend escape an abusive relationship.
“No one should ever have to fear punishment, criminalization, or a lengthy court battle for helping someone they care about,” she said.
(Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Bill Berkrot)
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