HOUSTON, TX – Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins and three of her staff members are being sued in Texas for their pro-life advocacy: an undercover investigation exposing how easily abortion pills are still trafficked into the state. Thomas More Society attorneys, joined by co-counsel Texas State Representative Briscoe Cain, have filed a formal answer to the lawsuit for Hawkins, Lydia Taylor Davis, Jamie Curry, and Megan Roos, who were sued in Harris County under Texas’s Woman and Child Protection Act (House Bill 7).

The lawsuit, Puerto v. Hawkins, was filed by a pseudonymous plaintiff represented by the pro-abortion firm Amplify Legal. She claims the women violated House Bill 7 by ordering abortion pills during that investigation in Houston last March. She seeks $459,782 and an injunction against Students for Life.

“Abortion activists are now seeking to punish pro-life women under the very law these brave women fought to pass,” said Peter Breen, Thomas More Society Executive Vice President and Head of Litigation. “Kristan Hawkins and her colleagues gathered evidence of an illegal trade and shared it with the public, investigative reporting the First Amendment protects. This case is a patently meritless attempt to silence and cover up the truth that out-of-state interests are flooding Texas with abortion pills—we will vigorously defend Kristan and her colleagues until this case is thrown out of court.”

Texas enacted House Bill 7 in 2025 to stop abortion pill trafficking, much of it by out-of-state prescribers hiding behind so-called shield laws. The law lets private citizens sue anyone who distributes, mails, or provides abortion-inducing drugs in Texas.

“Attempting to punish the Students for Life team for noticing the obvious—abortion pills can be illegally trafficked—is like going after the person reporting a fire instead of the arsonist. Laws are being broken, and babies are dying, while the sovereignty of Texas law is violated. We are ready to defend ourselves,” said Kristan Hawkins, President of Students for Life of America.

The answer denies that any of the women violated the law and asks the court to dismiss the case because the relator lacks standing to sue. The lawsuit was filed by a pseudonymous plaintiff, suing as a “relator” on the state’s behalf under the law’s private-enforcement provision, who admits she has no connection to the defendants.

The answer also invokes the law’s own protections. House Bill 7 expressly “does not apply to” anyone who handles abortion-inducing drugs solely for “a purpose that does not include performing, inducing, attempting, or assisting an abortion,” and it “does not prohibit” speech protected by the First Amendment or the Texas Constitution. The plaintiff’s own petition even calls the investigation a “publicity stunt.”

“The plaintiff’s lawyers wrote our defense for us,” said Breen. “Their own petition admits these women weren’t pregnant, weren’t seeking an abortion, and were exposing abortion pill traffickers—precisely the conduct Texas’ abortion pill trafficking law says it does not reach.”

The answer further notes three problems with the petition:

• It never identifies any act by any defendant that the law actually prohibits.
• It demands damages the statute does not provide.
• It seeks an injunction against Students for Life, even though the organization is not a party to the case.

The defendants will also seek sanctions against the plaintiff’s lawyers for filing a frivolous lawsuit meant to harass them.

Read the court documents:

• Defendants’ First Amended Answer, Affirmative Defenses, and Special Exceptions (113th District Court of Harris County, Texas)
• Relator’s Original Petition