According to court records and the Texas Attorney General, the Supreme Court was Roev in 2022. The midwife and her companions have been arrested and charged with abortions in illegal abortion, according to court records and the Texas Attorney General, which appears to be the first criminal arrest of an abortion provider since overturning Wade.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement that midwife Maria Margarita Rojas operates clinics in several towns around Houston.
The statement said she was “indicted for misconduct in abortion.” This was the second felony since the state's near-abortion ban came into effect in 2022.
Court records released late Monday show people who worked with Rojas, 29, who was also arrested and charged with the same crime. Records show that Rojas and Ray were detained on a $500,000 bond in Waller County, west of Houston, where the charges were made.
Lawyers for Rojas and Ray were not immediately able to reach them. However, a friend said that Rojas was arrested earlier this month while driving to her clinic.
“She was pulled at the muzzle by police on her way to the clinic and handcuffed her,” a friend of fellow midwife Holly Sheerman said she had spoken to Rojas over the phone last week. “She said they wouldn't tell her what was going on. She said they took her to Austin.”
Ciaman recalled that Rojas told her that others at the clinic, perhaps someone who worked at the front desk, had also been arrested.
The national abortion ban relies heavily on the threat of prosecution, with few cases of criminal cases actually filed. Abortion providers in Texas and other states with abortion bans have ceased operations after the decision. Instead, women seeking an abortion traveled to states where procedures remained legal or received abortion medications by mail.
“This is the first allegation, as far as I know, that someone from a banned state is offering abortion in a direct violation of abortion laws,” said Mark Harron of the Reproductive Rights Center.
In a few cases, accusations were brought against those who provided abortion medication to relatives with or without knowledge.
Louisiana charged a New York doctor with criminal charges earlier this year after mailing abortion pills to a Louisiana woman in violation of the state's ban. New York resisted the demand to hand over doctors under the state's Shield Act. This protects healthcare providers from state prosecutors due to abortion bans.
Texas has filed a civil lawsuit against the same doctor, Margaret Carpenter, to send pills to Texas residents. She was not defending herself in that case, and last month the judge ordered her to pay more than $100,000.
However, midwife arrests in the Houston area have gone further.
“In Texas, life is sacred,” Paxton said in a statement. “I will do everything in my power to protect the fetus at all times, to protect the state's life support laws, and to ensure that unlicensed individuals who endanger women's lives by performing illegal abortions are fully charged.”
Siaman said Rojas was detained all night and released after his first arrest. Waller County court records where the charges were filed show that she was taken into custody in early March on a charge of practice without a license.
County records showed no new charges for abortion late Monday, and the district clerk's office said it had not yet received an updated record for the case. Deputies with the Waller County Sheriff's Office said Rojas was brought to jail on Monday.
After being arrested on a felony charge of practicing medicine without a license, she was detained on a $10,000 bond. A new fee was added on Monday to provide abortions.
However, Rojas was not charged with the highest level of charge that occurs when an abortion leads to the end of her pregnancy. It was not clear why she was charged that way. A spokesman for Paxton did not respond to requests for comment.
However, in court documents, Rojas was accused of “attempting to abortion” a woman identified on two separate occasions in March, and accused another individual of “known abortion to law enforcement” earlier this year.
Paxton said his office also applied for a temporary restraining order to close the network of Rojas' clinics “to prevent further illegal activities.”
The latest case in the Houston area came from an investigation conducted at Paxton's office, according to Sean Whitmore, the Waller County District Attorney who worked in Paxton's office.
The Attorney General has no authority to enforce criminal law on his own, but he can do it at the request of a local district attorney and essentially becomes their partner in the case. That's what happened here, Whitmore said.
According to one of her clinic's websites, 49-year-old Lojas is a certified Texas midwife since 2018 and has been a community-based and hospital setting, and has “participated in over 700 births.”
Court records show that Rojas is a US citizen, but Ray, who was arrested, was a Cuban citizen.
Ciaman said Rojas was a Peruvian obstetrician before moving through the United States. She was shocked to hear allegations that Rojas had an illegal abortion.
“Are they saying she had an abortion or something?” said Sheaman, who described herself as conservative. “She's never talked about anything like that and she's very Catholic. I just don't believe in fees.”
Alain Delacheriere Contributed research.
