Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has signed a first-of-its-kind law that lets anyone sue prescribers and others responsible for getting abortion pills into the state.
Supporters are heralding the law, which Abbott signed Wednesday, as a way to enforce an existing ban. Abortion-rights advocates are bashing the law, saying it has the potential to turn abortion opponents, aggrieved former lovers and others into bounty hunters.
But it doesn't mean that organizations will stop sending pills into Texas.
Angel Foster, who runs Massachusetts-based The MAP, which prescribes the regimen of pills to women in every state, said her organization will keep sending pills to women in Texas, as it has about 10,000 times in the past two years.
“We really don’t change things unless we’re legally required to,” she said.
Rebecca Nall, the founder of I Need an A, which runs a website with abortion access information, suggested other providers also won't change.
“We’re confident people in Texas (and every state) will still be able to get abortion pills by mail,” she said in an email.
The majority of abortions in the U.S. employ pills, usually a combination of the drugs misoprostol and mifepristone.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and allowed states to enforce abortion bans, the method has moved to the center of the latest legal and political battles.
At least eight Democratic-controlled states have adopted shield laws that seek to protect medical professionals in their borders who prescribe the pills via telehealth and send them to patients in states where abortion or telehealth pill prescriptions are banned.
Those prescriptions are a key reason that the number of abortions has not fallen despite 12 states enforcing bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with limited exceptions, and four more barring it after about six weeks of gestation.
The Texas law, which is to take effect in three months, builds on an approach the state used when it implemented an earlier abortion ban: leaving enforcement to private people filing lawsuits rather than the government.
Under this measure, anyone could file a claim for $100,000 against people who cause the pills to be sent to Texas.
If a pregnant woman, the man who impregnated her or other close relatives sue successfully, they could be entitled to collect the entire $100,000. Others who sue would be in line for $10,000 — with the other $90,000 going to charity.
The law also answers a provision of shield laws that allows protected prescribers to sue those who sue them. The Texas law says that would not apply for the civil suits that originate there.
The Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, which provides legal and other support for abortion pill prescribers, is telling members that the shield laws should protect them from civil suits from Texas, said McKensey Smith, the group's deputy director.
Texas, the nation’s second most populous state, accounts for about one-third of the pills The MAP prescribes.
Foster said that she expects other prescribers to keep sending the pills to Texas, too.
She still anticipates the law will have an impact: Women seeking abortion in Texas could stop telling others that they are planning to seek pills from out-of-state providers lest those confidants use the information to launch lawsuits.
“One of the effects will be to isolate abortion patients in Texas,” Foster said.
Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, said she expects that people sued under the Texas law will make their own court claims, arguing that it is not enforceable.
“The drug manufacturers and the providers are all willing to take the risk that the shield laws will protect them,” she said.
She said the result could be individual court decisions on whether the Texas law applies in certain circumstances rather than one sweeping ruling.
Those suits won't be the first legal test around abortion pills, though.
Last month, Texas and Florida asked a court if they could join a lawsuit filed by the attorneys general of Idaho, Kansas and Missouri that seeks to have some federal approvals for mifepristone rolled back — and possibly blocking telehealth prescriptions for it.
And a New York doctor accused of shipping pills out of state faces two legal actions: criminal charges in Louisiana and a civil judgment in Texas. New York officials are refusing to extradite her or to enforce the judgment.
FILE - Dr. Angel Foster, co-founder of Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project, points out on a map of the United States on May 13, 2025, in Somerville, Mass., to show where her organization provides care. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are rushing higher worldwide, and oil prices are easing Wednesday as hopes build that the war with Iran could end soon. That's even though some of the signals investors saw as hopeful are already under dispute, and several prior bouts of optimism in financial markets quickly got undercut by continued, fierce fighting in the war.
The S&P 500 rose 0.8% and added to its leap from the day before, which was its best since last spring. That followed even bigger gains for stock markets across Europe and Asia, including an 8.4% surge in South Korea, which were catching up to Wall Street’s rally from Tuesday.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 357 points, or 0.8%, as of 10:45 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.2% higher.
Oil prices also fell back toward $100 per barrel after President Donald Trump claimed shortly before Wall Street began trading that Iran “has just asked the United States of America for a CEASEFIRE!”
“We will consider when Hormuz Strait is open, free, and clear. Until then, we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!”
Trump had also said the night before that the U.S. military could end its offensive in two to three weeks. That added to optimism following a couple tenuous signals of hope from earlier Tuesday that Wall Street latched onto, including a news report quoting Iran’s president as saying that it has “the necessary will to end the war” as long as certain requirements are met, including “guarantees to prevent a recurrence of aggression.”
The worry on Wall Street has been that the war may last a long time and keep oil and natural gas from the Persian Gulf out of global markets, which could create a brutal blast of inflation.
But hope has been quick to reverse to doubt on Wall Street, triggering manic swings back and forth for financial markets since the war with Iran began. Trump has also made statements that lifted markets, only to see the gains quickly disappear after increasing his military threats against Iran. Investors say Trump’s statements are becoming less impactful for financial markets.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmail Baghaei, called Trump’s claim about asking for a ceasefire “false and baseless,” according to a report on Iranian state television.
And oil prices remain high, even if they’ve eased so far this week. The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, was sitting at $101.83 following its declines, which is still up from roughly $70 before the war began.
U.S. gasoline prices rose again overnight to a national average of $4.06 per gallon, according to the auto club AAA.
Iran, meanwhile, hit an oil tanker off the coast of Qatar and Kuwait’s airport on Wednesday while airstrikes battered Tehran as the fighting continued. Iran also continues to hold a grip on the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of the world’s traded oil passes during peacetime.
“De-escalation hopes have given markets a lift, but we think the effects of the war would, in many cases, persist even if the war did end soon,” Thomas Mathews, head of markets, Asia Pacific at Capital Economics, said in a research note Wednesday.
“It’s worth thinking through how markets might fare if the war were to end ‘very soon,’” he wrote. “Do markets have further to recover if sentiment continues to improve? The answer is almost certainly yes.”
The White House said Trump will deliver a public address Wednesday evening on the Iran war.
On Wall Street, the majority of stocks rose, with Big Tech powering the move higher. Gains of 2.5% for Alphabet and 1% for Nvidia were two of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500.
They helped offset a 14.3% drop for Nike, which fell even though it reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than expected. Analysts said it gave some lackluster financial forecasts.
Hasbro fell 3.8% after the toy company found someone had gained unauthorized access to its computer network and is working to assess the full impact.
In stock markets abroad, indexes leaped more than 1.5% in France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Asian markets had even bigger gains.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 jumped 5.2% after a survey by Japan’s central bank showed business sentiment for major Japanese manufacturers improved despite worries about the Iran war.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady after a report said U.S. retailers made more money in February than economists expected. A separate report said U.S. manufacturing growth last month was slightly faster than economists expected.
The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.31% from 4.30% late Tuesday.
AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed.
James Conti works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Philip Finale works on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center left, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader reacts near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), right, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A screen displays financial information on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
