Thread by @JessicaValenti

A few important things about the Texas lawsuit against a New York abortion provider:

1) Ken Paxton appears to be lying about the patient suffering "serious complications" that "required medical intervention."

2) We need to talk about how Paxton found out about this abortion

On the abortion 'complication' claim: Paxton says in his press release that abortion pills "caused serious harm to this patient."

This appears to be a lie—one that is being repeated by mainstream outlets

If you read the brief, you'll see that the patient went to the hospital because she was worried about how much she was bleeding. That's not unusual with abortion pills - a lot of folks don't realize how much they'll bleed.

But the brief says nothing about her being treated

In fact, it seems the "medical intervention" Paxton refers to is the simple fact that she went to the hospital to get checked out.

It's unlikely there was another complication Paxton didn't mention because his goal here is to make abortion pills seem as dangerous as possible

This also aligns with something I've been tracking at the newsletter: the way that Republicans are trying to redefine abortion 'complications' in order to drum up fake data painting abortion as dangerous

But for Paxton, he got what he wanted: news articles saying that a young woman suffered serious complications from abortion pills.

Then there's how the case came about - how did Paxton find out about this particular young woman's abortion?

Something I've flagged in the newsletter recently is that groups like Texas Right to Life have been scouring men's rights groups to find aggrieved boyfriends, ex-husbands and the like who are angry their partners got abortions without their 'permission'

They're trying to find cases to bring to Paxton - focusing on men in particular because 1) they know women are generally happy with their abortions and 2) this is about men controlling women from top to bottom

If you read Paxton's brief, it's clear that the patient's boyfriend is the protagonist - it's all about him. This is what happened when a doc mentioned that the patient had lost a pregnancy (she hadn't told her boyfriend):

It appears that this guy's immediate reaction to the news was to be angry and suspicious - and head to her place to look for evidence of an abortion. Like I said, aggrieved men.

I am willing to bet that one of these anti-abortion orgs found this guy and brought him to Paxton

All of which is to say: Texas Republicans want this to look like a case where they're protecting women from dangerous abortion pills and irresponsible doctors. But scratch at the surface even a little and you can see that it's plain old controlling misogyny

One final thing: This is why careful reporting on abortion is so important. We're going to see more cases like this, and more claims that women are suffering abortion 'complications.' Publications shouldn't be repeating those claims uncritically!

I can't post a url to my newsletter without Twitter burying it, but this is an investigation I did last year on the way that Republicans are fucking with the definition of 'complications' to make abortion seem dangerous