Governor Gavin Newsom is standing his ground, with the support of other state officials, against the extradition of a Sonoma County doctor for sending abortion pills through the mail to a patient in Louisiana where they're illegal, citing a California telemedicine abortion protection law.

As SFist reported last week, officials in Louisiana are pushing California to allow Dr. Rémy Coeytaux, a Stanford-trained doctor in the Sonoma County town of Healdsburg, to face charges for “criminal abortion” in violation of Louisiana law. As KRON4 reports, the violation carries a penalty of one to 50 years of hard labor. Louisiana was the first in the country to classify abortion pills as “controlled dangerous substances,” even though they're considered very safe, per KRON4.

Per KRON4, Louisiana officials, who were able to locate Coeytaux through the tracking number on the package containing the pills, determined that the woman obtained them through an Austria-based company called AidAccess.

As KQED reports, Newsom is refusing to send Coeytaux to Louisiana, emphasizing that California enacted a set of laws geared toward protecting abortion providers from out-of-state legal action. Per KQED, Louisiana officials reportedly doxxed Coeytaux by posting his personal information online, potentially endangering his life.

“Louisiana’s request is denied,” Newsom wrote in a statement, per KRON4. “My position on this has been clear since 2022: We will not allow extremist politicians from other states to reach into California and try to punish doctors based on allegations that they provided reproductive health care services.”

“Not today. Not ever,” he concluded. “We will never be complicit with Trump’s war on women.”

“I am proud that our Governor is standing up to attempts to drag this country backward by criminalizing health care and threatening doctors for doing their jobs,” said East Bay Assemblymember Mia Bonta in a statement. “California saw this grim reality coming, and our law is clear: our state will not comply with extreme, bad-faith extradition requests designed to punish medical professionals for  providing lawful, essential reproductive care.”

“Abortion is health care, protected under California’s Constitution, and California will stand firmly in defense of patients, providers, and that fundamental truth,” Bonta continued.

“California is a safe haven for reproductive rights,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote on X Wednesday. “We will not be bullied by anti-abortion states.”

Image: ROCKVILLE, MARYLAND - APRIL 13: In this photo illustration, a bottle of Misoprostol tablets are displayed at a family planning clinic on April 13, 2023 in Rockville, Maryland. A Massachusetts appeals court temporarily blocked a Texas-based federal judge’s ruling that suspended the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug Mifepristone, which is part of a two-drug regimen to induce an abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy in combination with the drug Misoprostol. (Photo illustration by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

This post has been updated with a revised quote from Assemblymember Mia Bonta, per her press release.

Previously: Louisiana Officials Have Indicted a Bay Area Doctor for Prescribing Abortion Pills