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

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

“We have spent the last 19 months of our lives being victimized by this case, by this man,” Jackie Noyola said Rolling Stone. “It was stressful. It impacts our jobs, our families and our reputations. We’ll never get that time back, but I’m glad we’re here and grateful we won.”

In March 2023, Silva filed a civil lawsuit against Noyola and Amy Carpenter, his ex-wife Brittni’s best friends and associates, accusing them and a third woman of aiding Brittni in her alleged attempt to terminate an unwanted pregnancy amid the breakup their deeply problematic marriage.

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

Lawyers for Brittni Silva described Marcus’ lawsuit as an attempt to “use the legal process to harass, oppress, blackmail and intimidate” her after she left him. According to a transcript of a phone conversation released during the trial, Marcus Silva promised to drop the lawsuit if his ex-wife had sex with him and canceled the deal after she agreed.

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

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In his original complaint, Mitchell claimed that under Texas law, “a person who assists a pregnant woman in obtaining a self-performed abortion has committed the crime of murder and may be sued for wrongful death.” The case was the first time that a wrongful death lawsuit was filed against a pregnant person’s friends over an alleged abortion.

This summer, the Texas Supreme Court rejected Mitchell’s attempt to force Brittni Silva to release her own communications related to the alleged abortion, citing a Republican judge Marcus’ “disgracefully vicious harassment and intimidation of his ex-wife Brittni during the course of the proceedings.” “The denounced marriage failed and during this legal dispute.”

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

Mitchell refused to discuss his decision to seek dismissal days before the trial began. Noyola and Carpenter told it Rolling Stone They were looking forward to their day in court.

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

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At the same time, both women expressed relief that the lengthy ordeal had finally come to an end.

“It was just a constant state of stress, having to deal with a wrongful death trial 24 hours a day for 19 months,” Carpenter said. “There was a lot of emotional turmoil – and at the end of the day that was his goal, right? His goal was to bring chaos into our lives and perpetuate his ex-wife’s abuse by proxy.”

She added: “It’s been pretty stressful, pretty scary, but through all this time we’re hanging in there 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 over the course of the ordeal, but her friendship with Brittni suffered due to her ex-husband’s lawsuit. “Unfortunately, because of the lawsuit, some distance now had to be given,” said Noyola for legal reasons. “I think that’s the part that worked for Marcus. But we hear she’s doing great.”

For Mitchell, the lawsuit could be viewed either as a dismal failure—his client neither won his case nor received the $3 million and legal fees he sought—or as a hypothetical success, as the attention the case attracted made the specter more paralyzing Lawsuits have arisen for anyone in Texas who has considered supporting a friend who wants to terminate a pregnancy.

In addition to the Texas Abortion Premium Law (another law that remains untested), Mitchell is a driving force behind the “abortion trafficking” regulations that have proliferated following the Supreme Court’s overturn Roe v. Wadeand one of the figures who tried to popularize the idea that the Comstock Act, a 151-year-old obscenity law, could be enforced as a de facto national abortion ban if Trump is re-elected. (“We don’t need a federal ban when we have Comstock on the books,” Mitchell has said.)

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

She adds: “The state of Texas colludes with perpetrators by banning abortions, criminalizing even emergency exemptions, and promoting bounty hunting laws against people who are just trying to help their friends and loved ones…by allowing perpetrators like Marcus to file such lawsuits .”, they help them continue the abuse. Texas essentially gifted all of these laws to the perpetrators and gives them an avenue to continue this despicable behavior.”

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Brittni Silva could not immediately be reached to comment on the resolution of the case.

“I hope that this failure leads to people continuing to help their friends — that the Marcuses of this world won’t win,” Noyola says. “As long as women stand together and support each other, they simply won’t win.”