Texas man who sued his ex-wife’s friends over alleged abortion drops

Marcus Silva, the A Texas man who sought revenge on his ex-wife by suing her best friends for $1 million each under Texas’ abortion ban has asked a court to dismiss his claims. For the women Silva targeted, a legal nightmare that lasted more than a year and a half is finally over.

“We have spent the last 19 months of our lives being harassed by this case, by this man,” Jackie Noyola said. rolling stone. “It’s been stressful. It has had an impact on our jobs, our families, our reputation. We’ll never get that time back, but I’m happy we’re here and grateful we won.

In March 2023, Silva filed a civil suit against Noyola and Amy Carpenter, the best friends and colleagues of his ex-wife, Brittni, accusing them and a third woman of supporting Brittni when she allegedly sought to put ending an unwanted pregnancy. amid the dissolution of their deeply troubled marriage.

Silva was represented in the case by attorney Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general who represented former President Donald Trump at the Supreme Court earlier this year. Mitchell gained notoriety as the architect of Texas’ abortion bonus law, SB 8, which effectively ended abortion access in Texas nine months before the Supreme Court ruled against it. canceled. Roe v. Wade.

Brittni Silva’s lawyers described Marcus’ suit as an attempt to “use the legal process to harass, oppress, extort and intimidate her” after she left. According to a transcript of a telephone conversation made public during the proceedings, Marcus Silva promised he would drop the lawsuit if his ex-wife had sex with him, and reneged on the deal after acquiescing.

The trial in the case was scheduled to begin Monday in Galveston, Texas. On Thursday evening, Mitchell filed a notice of “non-prosecution with prejudice,” asking the court to dismiss his client’s lawsuit against the three women with prejudice, meaning he can never revive the allegations. (Mitchell says the two sides reached a “confidential” settlement. No money changed hands, according to a person familiar with the settlement, although Noyola and Carpenter agreed to drop the countersuit they had filed against Marcus Silva.)

In his original complaint, Mitchell claimed that under Texas law, “a person who assists a pregnant woman in obtaining a self-managed abortion has committed the crime of murder and may be prosecuted for wrongful death.” It was the first time a wrongful death lawsuit had been filed against the friends of a pregnant person for an alleged abortion.

This summer, the Texas Supreme Court denied Mitchell’s attempt to force Brittni Silva to turn over her own communications related to the alleged abortion, with a Republican judge blasting Marcus’ “shamefully vicious harassment and intimidation of his ex-wife Brittni during their detention. the end of the marriage and during this dispute.

With Mitchell’s motion to dismiss, the dubious legal strategy remains untested. Men in Arizona and Alabama have already tried to sue doctors who performed their ex-partners’ abortions for wrongful death — so far, without success. (The Arizona case is ongoing; the Alabama lawsuit was dismissed.)

Mitchell declined to discuss his decision to request a dismissal of the case days before the trial was scheduled to begin. Noyola and Carpenter said rolling stone they couldn’t wait to have their day in court.

“We were ready to go to court on Monday. We were ready to make our voices heard. Honestly, it was disappointing that after 19 months of all this extreme stress, these bullies could now change their minds,” Noyola says. “They have no proof, because we didn’t do anything wrong, there’s nothing to prove.”

At the same time, both women expressed relief that this long ordeal was finally over.

“It was just a constant state of stress having to deal with a wrongful death lawsuit, 24/7, for 19 months,” Carpenter says. “It was a lot of emotional upheaval – and ultimately that was his goal, right? His goal was to sow chaos in our lives and continue his abuse of his ex-wife, by proxy.

She adds: “It’s been quite stressful, quite scary, but through it all, we’re holding on and staying strong – and if anything, it’s brought us closer together and made our voices even louder than before. »

Noyola and Carpenter’s friendship grew stronger during the ordeal, but their friendship with Brittni suffered from her ex-husband’s trial. “Unfortunately, because of the lawsuit, there now has to be some distance” for legal reasons, Noyola said. “I guess that’s the part that worked for Marcus. But we heard she was doing great.

For Mitchell, the trial could be considered either a dismal failure – his client was unsuccessful, nor did he get the $3 million and legal fees he sought – or a success. hypothetical, since the attention generated by the case has raised the specter of crippling prosecutions. for anyone in Texas who may have considered supporting a friend seeking to terminate a pregnancy.

In addition to Texas’ abortion bounty law (another law that has yet to be tested), Mitchell is a driving force behind the “abortion trafficking” ordinances that have spread across the following the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wadeas well as one of the figures who sought to popularize the idea that the Comstock Act, a 151-year-old obscenity law, could be implemented as a de facto national ban on abortion if Trump is re-elected. (“We don’t need a federal ban when Comstock is in effect,” Mitchell said.)

Mitchell, Carpenter says, “used the legal system to allow his client to continue to relentlessly abuse his ex-wife in hopes of deterring people from supporting their loved ones’ access to abortion.”

She adds: “The state of Texas colludes with abusers by banning abortion, criminalizing even emergency exceptions, promoting bounty hunting laws against people who are just trying to help their friends and their loved ones… By allowing abusers like Marcus to file lawsuits like this. , they help them continue the abuse. Texas basically offered all these laws to abusers and gives them the ability to continue this disgusting behavior.

Brittni Silva was not immediately available for comment on the resolution of the case.

“I hope this failure means people will continue to help their friends – that the Marcuses of the world won’t win,” Noyola says. “As long as women come together to support each other, they will not win.”