Texas woman charged with murder after abortion

Dennis TApril 10, 2022

47 2 minutes read

A 26-year-old woman in Texas was arrested and charged with murder after what authorities claimed was a “self-induced abortion,” the Associated Press reported Saturday.

Lizelle Herrera was arrested Thursday and taken to the Starr County jail in Rio Grande City, along the Rio Grande River and the country’s southern border with Mexico. In a statement to the AP, the local sheriff’s office said that Herrera was charged after “intentionally and knowingly causing the death of an individual by self-induced abortion,” without providing details of which legal statute she had violated.

She has been released on bond and has retained legal counsel. Her lawyer, Calixtro Villarreal, declined to comment.

News of Herrera’s arrest was first reported by the Monitor, a newspaper based in McAllen, Texas. Few details surrounding the arrest had been confirmed by Saturday afternoon. A spokesperson for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas declined to comment until the organization was able to learn more about the case.

It was also unclear whether authorities assert that Herrera had an abortion that violated a law or helped someone else obtain one. Neither the Starr County sheriff’s office nor the district attorney’s office responded to requests for comment.
Herrera’s bail had been set at $500,000 and she was being held at the Starr County jail in Rio Grande City. Frontera Fund, an activist group that funds abortions and operates in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, said in a statement Saturday that Herrera has no legal representation.

Texas enacted a law in September that banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before most women know they are pregnant. In a method meant to evade judicial scrutiny, enforcement of the law was left to private citizens rather than state officials. Under the law, called Senate Bill 8, any person can sue anyone who performs an abortion or helps someone get an abortion after six weeks.

But that law only has civil consequences, not criminal. Therefore, it’s unclear which law authorities were relying on to charge Herrera.
This arrest is inhumane,” Rockie Gonzalez, founder of Frontera Fund, said in a statement. In an interview, Gonzalez said that she expects an “aggressive showing” from abortion rights advocates as Herrera’s case moves forward. “We also expect that they will have their share of support from the antiabortion right, who are going to be itching to set this precedent.”

The arrest comes as Republican-led states across the country rush to pass abortion restrictions ahead of a Supreme Court decision this summer that could overturn or significantly weaken Roe v. Wade, the case that has guaranteed abortion access nationwide since 1973.

Texas is one of nine states that still has an abortion ban on its books that was passed before Roe. The prosecutors may have made these charges with that pre-Roe ban in mind, said Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law who specializes in the federal courts and has closely followed the Texas abortion ban.

Source: IOL

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