Columbia Journal of Gender and Law

All My Patients Live in Texas: Texas v. Carpenter and the Challenge to New York’s Telemedicine Shield Law

2026-06-03T22:47:50+00:00

This article examines the legal conflict between abortion “shield laws” in abortionpermissive states and the extraterritorial reach of anti-abortion statutes via a recent case brought against an abortion provider in New York. In December 2024, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a civil suit against Dr. Margaret Carpenter, a New York physician and co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, alleging she violated Texas’ total abortion ban by prescribing and shipping medication to a Texas resident via telehealth. This Note analyzes how this case serves as the first major test for New York’s shield law, highlighting that while such laws offer robust protections regarding professional licensing and extradition, they remain vulnerable to out-of-state discovery tactics and the possible enforcement of civil judgments.

Part I provides an overview of the abortion provision landscape post-Dobbs, including interstate travel, telemedicine abortion provision, and the statutory frameworks behind “bounty hunter” laws in abortion-hostile states and “shield laws” in abortion-permissive states. Part II discusses the claims made in Texas v. Carpenter and analyzes the interactions between New York’s shield law and Texas’ anti-abortion laws. Part III addresses the constitutional threat to shield laws posed by the U.S. Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause and how anti-abortion states may try to force shield states to enforce their judgments. Finally, it argues that shield states must enact specific judgment enforcement provisions— such as New York’s proposed S.B. 1995—which frame the refusal to satisfy out-of-state judgments as an exercise of a state’s police power. By narrowing the mechanisms of enforcement rather than denying the judgment’s validity, shield states can better insulate their providers from “bounty hunter” laws and state-led litigation while navigating the “exacting” demands of the Full Faith and Credit Clause.

The Base of the Iceberg: Targeted Financial Sanctions as a Tool to Combat Structural Violence Against Women Globally

2026-06-03T23:02:49+00:00

Violence against women is most often understood, and addressed, through the lens of direct, physical harm. This Note argues that such a framework is inadequate. Drawing on the theory of structural violence, first articulated by sociologist Johan Galtung and later refined by medical anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer, this Note contends that women globally are disproportionately harmed not only by individual actors but by the economic, legal, and political systems that constrain their agency, limit their access to resources, and prevent them from attaining the highest standard of physical and mental health. These forms of indirect, institutional violence sit at the base of the iceberg—pervasive, normalized, and largely overlooked in both legal scholarship and U.S. foreign policy. This Note examines the current U.S. human rights sanctions regime, in particular the Global Magnitsky sanctions program, and identifies a significant gap: sanctions designations related to gender-based violence have been limited almost entirely to direct, conflict-related sexual violence, leaving structural forms of violence against women and girls largely unaddressed. It argues that the U.S. government must expand its practical interpretation of what constitutes a “serious human rights abuse” under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act and Executive Order 13818 to encompass gender-based structural violence, particularly where state actors, legal institutions, and government officials are identifiable conduits of harm. It further advocates for gender-sensitive implementation of any sanctions designations to mitigate the risk of disproportionate harm to the very populations such measures seek to protect. Lastly, the Note considers the viability of this proposed framework in light of the second Trump Administration’s significant departure from prior U.S. gender and human rights policy.

Sex on Trial

2026-06-03T22:58:21+00:00

On January 21, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in Andrew v. White that the State’s introduction of sexualizing evidence in a woman’s capital trial may violate due process. In Brenda Andrew’s case, prosecutors presented evidence about her sexual relationships, clothing, and style of underwear as proof that she was guilty of capital murder. Our research, supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation, reveals for the first time that the prosecution’s tactics in Brenda Andrew’s case were far from unique. Based on a systematic review of the trial transcripts of every woman currently on death row in the United States, we demonstrate that capital prosecutors routinely weaponize women’s sexuality in ways that are legally questionable and culturally regressive in order to secure punitive outcomes. We document cases across multiple states in which prosecutors discuss women’s bodies, underwear, intimate relationships, and sexual experiences in their capital trials as proof of their immoral and criminal mindset. In so doing, the State encourages jurors to convict and condemn women based on their violation of gendered moral codes.

We present our findings against a historical backdrop of women’s criminal prosecutions in the United States and Europe. The prosecutorial tactics we document are modern-day echoes of sex-shaming tactics commonplace in the prosecution of women for witchcraft and other offenses dating back hundreds of years. Although such tactics have been documented by historians and social scientists in isolated case studies, this paper is the first to conclude that the sexualization of women capital defendants is an ongoing and pervasive problem that undermines the quality of justice women receive. We conclude with a call for systemic reform—including legislation—to limit the ways in which prosecutors can invoke irrelevant evidence of women’s sex lives in criminal proceedings.

The Right to Disconnect as a Feminist Demand: Labor Law, Flexible Work, and the Gendered Politics of Leisure

2026-06-03T23:07:21+00:00

This Article explores the right to disconnect as a feminist response to the gendered impacts of digitally-enabled flexible work. While remote and flexible arrangements are often hailed for enhancing work-life balance, especially for women, they frequently result in overwork, time poverty, and the erosion of boundaries between paid and unpaid labor. The pressure to remain constantly reachable, often described as the “technological imperative,” exacerbates these issues, particularly for women who continue to shoulder disproportionate care responsibilities. In this context, disconnection is increasingly proposed as a remedy to the demands of flexible work. Drawing on feminist theories of time and labor, this Article critiques prevailing narratives that frame disconnection as a matter of individual self-care. Such framings obscure the structural pressures driving constant availability and risk reinforcing social inequalities. Instead, this Article advocates for enshrining disconnection as a collective labor right. Through a comparative legal analysis of existing disconnection laws in France, Germany, Portugal, and beyond, it argues that only robust legal protections—especially those imposing obligations on employers—not to intrude outside working hours can effectively safeguard workers’ time. Reframed as a collective right, disconnection emerges as a vital feminist demand for reclaiming free time and resisting the encroachment of work into private life.