A Texas man has dropped his lawsuit against three women who helped his ex-wife obtain abortion pills, a case widely seen as designed to discourage private citizens from aiding women in using the pills in states where abortion is all but banned.
The move on Thursday by the plaintiff, Marcus Silva, was part of a settlement with the defendants, Jackie Noyola, Amy Carpenter and Aracely Garcia. The exact details of the settlement were not made public, but they did not involve any financial terms, according to lawyers for both sides. Ms. Noyola and Ms. Carpenter also dropped counterclaims they had filed.
Mr. Silva filed his suit shortly after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade and one year after Texas essentially banned most abortions with a law that also deputized private individuals to sue anyone who “aids or abets” a woman seeking an abortion.
One of Mr. Silva’s lawyers is Jonathan Mitchell, a former solicitor general of Texas. The architect of the state abortion ban, he is considered a pioneer in using private lawsuits to deter the procedure. Abortion rights groups accuse him of filing the suits to attract publicity and intimidate people.
Elizabeth Myers, a lawyer for Ms. Noyola and Ms. Carpenter, said the fact that Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Silva did not want to move forward with the case was “very telling.”
“They live on the creation of fear,” she said. “They need the fear to ultimately lead to something real and it didn’t.”
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