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ken paxton
Alarm as Texas Files State's First Criminal Abortion Charges Against Midwife
"Republicans are strategically targeting people they think the public won't rally behind," said rights advocate Jessica Valenti. "Let's make sure to prove them wrong."
Mar 18, 2025
A midwife in the Houston area on Monday became the first person to be criminally charged under Texas' abortion ban, with Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton accusing Maria Margarita Rojas of providing illegal abortion care and practicing medicine without a license.
If convicted, Rojas faces up to 20 years in prison under the state's near-total ban on abortion.
Writer and abortion rights advocate Jessica Valenti said Rojas is likely being "targeted" by Paxton, noting that the midwife provides "healthcare to a primarily Spanish-speaking, low-income community."
"Paxton, a political operator who picks cases strategically, likely chose Rojas because he believes Americans won't find her sympathetic—whether due to racism, classism, or the stories his office plans to spin," wrote Valenti. "In other words: Republicans are strategically targeting people they think the public won't rally behind. Let's make sure to prove them wrong."
Rojas owns and operates Clínicas Latinoamericanas, which includes four health clinics in the Houston suburbs of Spring, Waller, and Cypress. She has reportedly been a certified midwife in Texas since 2018 and was an obstetrician in Peru before immigrating to the United States.
According to The Washington Post, Rojas was first arrested on March 6 on charges of practicing medicine without a license, and was held on $10,000 bond. The new charges were added Monday, and Rojas and another employee of the clinic, Jose Ley, were being held in a jail in Waller County, with their bond set at a combined $1.4 million.
The New York Times noted that Waller County, where the charges were brought, is more conservative than Harris County, the largest county in Texas and the one where a majority of Rojas' clinics are located.
Court documents show that Paxton's office has accused Rojas of having "attempted an abortion on" a woman identified as E.G. in March.
"Paxton and Texas Republicans will be working overtime to paint Rojas as a villain, regardless of the truth. They know that abortion bans are incredibly unpopular, as is arresting healthcare providers."
Rojas was "known by law enforcement to have performed an abortion" on another occasion earlier this year, according to the attorney general, who has filed for a temporary restraining order against Clínicas Latinoamericanas "to prevent further illegal activity."
When she was first arrested, Rojas was "pulled over by the police at gunpoint and handcuffed" while she was on her way to the clinic and was taken to Austin and held overnight before being released, her friend and fellow midwife Holly Shearman told the Post.
Shearman said she did not believe Rojas is guilty of the charges against her.
Valenti emphasized that most details of Rojas' case at this point are being shared by Paxton's office, and warned that the vehemently anti-abortion attorney general will likely attempt to portray the midwife in a negative light to garner support—considering that a majority of Americans don't support criminal charges for health professionals who provide abortion care.
A survey last March by the KFF found that 8 in 10 Democrats, two-thirds of Independents, and about 50% of Republicans did not believe doctors who provide abortion care should face fines or prison time.
"You cannot trust any information coming from Paxton's office or Texas law enforcement," said Valenti. "Paxton and Texas Republicans will be working overtime to paint Rojas as a villain, regardless of the truth. They know that abortion bans are incredibly unpopular, as is arresting healthcare providers. They're not just fighting a legal battle here, but a PR one."
Valenti noted that when Paxton filed a civil lawsuit against Dr. Maggie Carpenter, a physician in New York who he accused of prescribing and sending pills for a medication abortion to a patient in Texas, he claimed the Texas resident "suffered 'serious complications' despite providing no evidence." Carpenter was fined more than $100,000 last month.
"There's every reason to believe Paxton's team will pull similar tactics here, coming out with all sorts of claims about this midwife and her practice," wrote Valenti.
Marc Hearron, interim associate director of ligation at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the Post that "Texas officials have been trying every which way to terrify healthcare practitioners from providing care and to trap Texans."
Hearron toldThe Cut that "doctors all across the state are saying that they are afraid that their judgment is going to be second-guessed, and all of these actions show that Paxton is chomping at the bit to go after anybody who provides an abortion."
"It's just a litany of situations where it shows the state of Texas does not care about women's lives," said Hearron. "What it cares about is stopping women from getting the care that they need, no matter what."
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Attacks on Shield Laws Ramp Up as NY Doctor Fined $100,000 for Providing Abortion in Texas
The Louisiana attorney general also tried to extradite the physician for sending medication abortion pills to a patient in the state.
Feb 14, 2025
Republican-controlled states' testing of abortion rights "shield laws" that have been passed in eight states in recent years ramped up on Thursday as a judge in Texas ordered a New York doctor to pay more than $100,000 in fines and fees for prescribing medication abortion pills to a 20-year-old woman in the Dallas area last year.
On the same day, the physician, Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT), was subject to a demand for extradition to Louisiana after a state grand jury last month indicted her for mailing misoprostol and mifepristone, pills that are used in a majority of abortions in the U.S., to the state.
The charges in Louisiana are the first criminal charges filed against an abortion provider in a state with a shield law, which bar officials and agencies from cooperating with lawsuits and prosecutions against healthcare professionals who send abortion pills to patients in states that ban abortion care. The laws have been passed as advocates in states where abortion care remains legal fight to ensure Americans across the country can still obtain care after the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not file criminal charges against Carpenter, but accused her in a lawsuit of violating the state's near-total abortion ban by providing the medication to a resident through the mail.
In the country's first ruling on a case involving a shield law, State District Judge Bryan Gantt ordered Carpenter to pay $100,000 in fines and $13,000 in attorneys' and other fees. He also ruled that Carpenter, who did not attend Thursday's court proceedings, "is permanently enjoined from prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents."
Violating the ruling could result in a jail sentence for Carpenter.
Despite the ruling, ACT executive director Julie Kay toldThe Associated Press on Thursday that "patients can access medication abortion from licensed providers no matter where they live."
"ACT has and continues to stand behind New York and other shield laws across the country that enable the distribution of safe and effective telemedicine abortion care."
In December, ACT said medication abortion pills, which have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration since 2000 and have "been proven safe and effective globally for decades," are "an essential part of women's healthcare."
The Texas case is expected to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court, where the right-wing majority could rule against legal protections for abortion providers who provide telemedicine for out-of-state patients—even as Republicans including President Donald Trump claim they believe abortion law should be left up to the states.
In Louisiana, Carpenter was indicted for allegedly violating the state's near-total abortion ban by sending pills for a girl who reportedly then experienced a medical emergency. The patient's mother has also been charged. If convicted, Carpenter could face up to 15 years in prison.
Republican state Attorney General Jeff Landry demanded her extradition to Louisiana, but New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Thursday that she "will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana. Not now, not ever."
ACT said Thursday that "ongoing attempts by anti-abortion state officials to restrict access to abortion care are inconsistent with New York state law."
"ACT has and continues to stand behind New York and other shield laws across the country that enable the distribution of safe and effective telemedicine abortion care," said the group.
The Texas case also reflects a dynamic that could lead to new prosecutions against abortion providers: those resulting from legal challenges filed by men whose partners receive abortion care.
In the case of the 20-year-old Texas resident, the patient was taken to a hospital in July by a man identified in legal filings as the "biological father of her unborn child."
After the man "started to suspect" the patient had used abortion pills and found the medications that had been prescribed by Carpenter and ACT, he "filed a complaint with the Texas attorney general's office."
The New York Timesreported that with Texas Right to Life, several men plan to file wrongful death lawsuits in the coming weeks against doctors and others who assisted their female partners in obtaining abortion care.
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'Don't Be Fooled': Laken Riley Act Not About Crime by Migrants—It's a Right-Wing Power Grab
"This bill is political grandstanding at its worst," said one lawmaker.
Jan 10, 2025
With the U.S. Senate poised to vote on the Laken Riley Act on Friday, immigrant rights advocates are warning that—despite claims from proponents that the bill is aimed at protecting American communities from violent crime—supporters of the legislation are actually advancing a dangerous "Trojan horse" and securing a power grab for xenophobic right-wing authorities.
The bill is named after Laken Riley, a Georgia woman who was killed last February while she was jogging. Jose Antonio Ibarra, an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela, was convicted of her murder in November, and the case was a focal point of President-elect Donald Trump's campaign last year.
But as Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of immigrant rights group America's Voice, said Thursday, the bill "is filled with unrelated and sweeping measures that won't improve public safety."
Central provisions in the legislation, which passed in the House on Tuesday with the support of 37 Democrats along with the entire Republican caucus, would require immigration officers to detain undocumented immigrants who are accused of theft, including shoplifting—an apparent response to the fact that Ibarra was cited for shoplifting in Georgia but was not detained before he killed Riley.
Critics have expressed outrage over the provision, with Cárdenas saying it would trample "important due process principles—greenlighting detention and deportation for those accused, rather than convicted of low-level crimes."
"It's no surprise Republicans are continuing to exploit a horrific act of violence and portray immigrants as dangerous threats to America, despite the reality that immigrants have a lower crime rate than the native-born," said Cárdenas. "And it also should be no surprise to any close observers of right-wing politics that the bill being pushed this week doesn't seek to improve public safety or even focus on public safety threats."
At Arizona Republic, editor Elvia Díaz advised readers, "Don't be fooled by soundbites."
"Republicans and now Democrats, too, want you to believe the Laken Riley Act is about deporting shoplifters," she wrote. "It's a power grab by states to dismantle federal authority over immigration enforcement."
In a column at MSNBC on Wednesday, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote that Republicans pushing the bill are asking the question: "Who runs the U.S. immigration system?"
The answer, backed up by numerous courts, has been the federal government, but the bill would give broad new authorities to state officials, such as attorneys general, to file legal challenges in order to have specific immigrants detained and to force the State Department to block visas from countries that won't accept immigrants who are deported.
"Giving states a veto power over thousands of decisions made every day by federal law enforcement officers and leaders will complicate immigration issues in every community and threaten to set off international incidents which could hurt U.S. interests around the globe," wrote Reichlin-Melnick.
The visa provision could impact countries such as China and India, which have "historically not cooperated fully with the United States on deportations," and where more than 1.8 million immigrant and short-term visas were issued to nationals in 2023.
"Because the United States is so intertwined with these countries, administrations of both parties have been unwilling to threaten blanket visa bans as a punishment for not accepting deportees," wrote Reichlin-Melnick. "Yet should the Laken Riley Act become law, that decision may no longer be in the hands of our nation's top diplomats and law enforcement officers; it could be in the hands of a single federal district court judge in Texas or Louisiana."
He continued:
What could this look like in practice? Imagine a person from China living in Texas on an H-1B visa who commits an offense that leads to a deportation order. If China does not accept the deportation, [Texas Attorney General] Ken Paxton could go to court seeking to force the federal government to ban all visas from China (or maybe just all H-1B visas) without having to worry about taking the blame for the economic or diplomatic fallout to the United States.
"What happened to Laken Riley was a terrible tragedy, and the perpetrator has been sentenced to life in prison for his heinous acts," wrote Reichlin-Melnick on Wednesday. "But just as Willie Horton's bad acts decades ago were not a justification for supercharging a system of mass incarceration, the heinous acts of Jose Ibarra should not be an excuse to flip our system of constitutional governance on its head and empower individual states and federal judges to run immigration law."
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who opposed the bill this week, said he has heard from "a lot of people who say they support this bill, but who don't seem to know what it really does."
"For example, if this bill is signed into law, a 12-year-old kid brought here by a parent could be LOCKED IN ICE DETENTION if they are accused—not even convicted, simple accused—of stealing a candy bar," McGovern said in a post on X, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement..
Kylie Cheung of Jezebel pointed out that while Republicans have held the Laken Riley Act up as essential legislation to protect women from violence, "these lawmakers don't care about women's safety or high rates of femicide perpetrated by people with citizenship—they've cut all actual resources for victims. They just want to gut basic civil liberties."
Immigration attorney Ben Winograd of the Immigrant & Refugee Appellate Center offered a hypothetical scenario under the bill: "Imagine a man who is a U.S. citizen marries a woman who entered the country illegally. He abuses her constantly, and after learning that she intends to leave him, he calls the police and (falsely) claims that she stole some of his property."
"If the police arrest the woman, she would be subject to mandatory detention while in removal proceedings—even if the police determined that the accusation was bogus," said Winograd. "The Laken Riley Act would allow any person with a grudge against an undocumented immigrant to make them subject to indefinite mandatory detention simply by leveling a false accusation of theft."
All the Senate Republicans are sponsoring the bill, which was cleared for a vote on Thursday, with Sens. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) joining them. In order to overcome a filibuster the GOP needs just six more Democrats to support the legislation.
Sen. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), one of nine senators who opposed advancing the bill on Thursday, said he is in favor of "bipartisan action to fix our broken immigration system."
"I stand ready to work across the aisle to get it done," he said. "Let's start from a foundation grounded in our Constitution."
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