Ken Paxton doesn't talk much about abortion on the campaign trail these days. He doesn't need to. His record does the talking — and a new ProPublica investigation shows that record reaches well beyond Texas.

ProPublica's October 2026 report walks through a decade of Ken Paxton's work as Texas attorney general. Allies and critics agree on one thing, the reporters found: his signature achievement in that office has been advancing restrictions on abortion. And it notes that "lately, Paxton has said little about abortion — an issue on which he has defended restrictions more stringent than many Texans say they want."

Now he wants to take that playbook to the U.S. Senate.

What he did with the job he has

Here is some of what ProPublica documented.

He defended Texas's six-week ban while Roe was still law. In 2021, Texas passed a ban written so that private citizens — not the state — would enforce it, by suing doctors for up to $10,000. When providers and the Biden administration challenged it, Paxton's office told the Supreme Court there was "nothing for a federal court to enjoin," because state officials weren't the ones enforcing it. The Court agreed, and the ban stayed in effect. Days later, Josseli Barnica, 17 weeks pregnant and miscarrying, was told by her providers, according to her husband, that "it would be a crime to give her an abortion" until there was no heartbeat. She died of sepsis. Medical experts told ProPublica her death was preventable.

He sued to stop emergency rooms from following federal emergency-care rules. After Roe fell in 2022, the federal government told hospitals that a law requiring them to stabilize every emergency patient sometimes meant performing an abortion — for a woman with severe preeclampsia, for example — even where the state banned it. Paxton sued, saying it would turn "every emergency room in the country into a walk-in abortion clinic." He won. Then his win was used in another state.

His win helped Idaho turn its ban back on. Idaho had lost its own fight over emergency care. Paxton's January 2024 appeals-court victory created a split between courts, and Idaho's lawyers went to the Supreme Court the next day, citing it. Three days after Paxton's ruling, the Court let Idaho enforce its full ban. Over the following three months, Idaho's largest hospital system said it had to fly six patients out of state for abortions.

He threatened hospitals over an abortion a judge had approved. In December 2023, Kate Cox — a mother of two, 20 weeks pregnant with a baby diagnosed with a condition that kills the vast majority of babies born with it — won a court order allowing her to end the pregnancy. That same day, Paxton sent letters to three hospitals warning that the order wouldn't protect them or her doctor from legal action. Legal experts told ProPublica they had never seen another state attorney general do that. Cox left Texas for care. We wrote about how that same warning hangs over Tierra Walker's death, which her family is now suing Paxton over.

He became the only attorney general to criminally prosecute a provider under a state ban. Paxton's office arrested Maria Rojas, a licensed midwife who ran clinics serving low-income, Spanish-speaking patients, and charged her with violating the abortion ban. He then indicted eight of her staff. Her lawyers say at least one "abortion" was actually care for a miscarriage. An appeals court this summer threw out the order he won shutting her clinics, finding the state hadn't shown enough evidence to justify it. She has pleaded not guilty.

He went after a doctor in New York. In December 2024, Paxton sued Dr. Margaret Carpenter, a New York physician, for prescribing abortion pills by telehealth to a patient in Plano. A New York county clerk refused to register the judgment, citing the state's "shield law," which protects doctors providing care that is legal there. Paxton then filed two more suits this year against providers in Delaware and California. Louisiana, Arkansas and Alabama have since copied the strategy, and are now asking the Supreme Court to strike down shield laws in New York, Massachusetts and California.

He sued Texas cities to stop them from helping women travel. After a court forced San Antonio to end a $100,000 program that helped women travel for abortions, Paxton vowed: "I will always do everything in my power to prevent radicals from manipulating the system to murder innocent babies."

What he'd do with a Senate seat

As attorney general, Paxton could act alone. In the Senate, he'd be one vote of 100. But the people who back a national abortion ban are counting on him anyway.

"He'll have the ability to use some of the laws that he's defended in Texas as influence to draft legislation in the U.S. Senate," Mary Elizabeth Castle of Texas Values — a Christian group that supports a national ban — told ProPublica.

Legal experts and advocates on both sides expect he could join senators pressuring the FDA to pull its approval of mifepristone, the abortion pill. And Paxton, who calls himself a strong supporter of IVF, recently said he was open to restrictions aimed at preventing the loss of fertilized eggs. Anti-abortion activists are pushing for legal rights for fetuses, which ProPublica notes could affect birth control and IVF.

Dr. Jennifer Villavicencio, an abortion provider, told ProPublica she has moved her family twice, partly out of fear that Paxton is building a blueprint for going after doctors like her. "It's very disheartening and scary to think that it's maybe coming to the U.S. Senate," she said.

Why he's not talking about it

Paxton's opponent, James Talarico, has said he supports restoring a federal right to abortion. Paxton has said little about it. ProPublica notes that abortion has played "a far smaller role" in this race than questions about Paxton's ethics — and that ProPublica has identified at least two other pregnant Texas women, besides Tierra Walker, who died without what experts called appropriate emergency care. Paxton has not commented on any of their deaths, and he did not answer ProPublica's questions.

He isn't campaigning on this record. He's asking Texans to send it to Washington.

What the record shows

As Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton defended a six-week ban that took effect while Roe was still law, sued to stop emergency rooms from following federal emergency-care rules, threatened hospitals over an abortion a judge had approved, criminally prosecuted a midwife, and sued doctors in New York, Delaware and California — strategies other Republican attorneys general have since copied. Anti-abortion groups expect him to carry that record into the Senate, while he says little about it in the campaign.

Source

Ken Paxton's Anti-Abortion Influence Already Extended Beyond Texas. He Could Take It Further in the Senate. — ProPublica