When a Houston-area midwife and one of her employees were arrested this week and charged with felonies for allegedly performing illegal abortions and operating unlicensed clinics, it shows that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton continues to target and intimidate healthcare providers and pregnant women, critics charge.
As a result of an investigation launched by Paxton. Maria Margarita Rojas, 48, and Jose Manuel Cendan Ley, 29, are accused of operating unlicensed clinics in Houston suburbs and performing abortions that are banned in Texas under a 2022 law.
Planned Parenthood Texas Votes Executive Director Shellie Hayes-McMahon issued the following statement in response to a request for comment. “While we do not yet have all the facts or details on this case, we do know anti-abortion politicians like Ken Paxton have persistently targeted healthcare providers and pregnant people. He and other abortion opponents have advanced a broad, deliberate campaign to intimidate healthcare workers and restrict access to essential reproductive care. All Texans deserve access to safe, legal, and timely reproductive health care, including abortion, without fear of criminalization or harassment. Paxton and others have continually prioritized political ideology over Texans' health and safety.”
This is the first time criminal charges have been filed since the state’s near-total abortion ban went into effect. Opponents of the Human Life Protection Act have said it is too vague and does not appropriately address life-threatening medical emergencies.
New York-based Pregnancy Justice senior vice president Dana Sussman said the arrests are part of Paxton’s continued agenda to prioritize attacks on abortion rights and on pregnant people’s rights.
“It is an attempt to scare people from getting abortion care that they need and that they deserve in their communities,” she said. “As healthcare providers, we’ve seen the attorney general of Texas fight efforts to allow doctors to provide women with life-saving emergency abortions. We’ve seen him file a civil lawsuit against a New York abortion provider and now we’re seeing the inevitable next step in this campaign, to charge a provider in Texas with violations of Texas’ criminal abortion law.
“It’s particularly cruel given that midwives and particularly midwives of color have long been community leaders … I think it’s particularly cruel and upsetting that this is the target of this first criminal charge.”
“It’s particularly cruel given that midwives and particularly midwives of color have long been community leaders … I think it’s particularly cruel and upsetting that this is the target of this first criminal charge.”
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Paxton’s action doesn’t mean that abortion in Texas will end but it creates fear and uncertainty, forcing women to go out of state to get care, Sussman added. Many Texans have died from complications because they weren’t able to get the care they needed.
“It’s just deeply, deeply dangerous,” she said.
Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel and legal director for the If/When/How reproductive justice project, echoed those concerns.
“We see this attack as both horrifying and unsurprising,” she said. “It is unsurprising for us to see that one of the first folks within the state that Paxton’s office has gone after is a midwife and a midwife who appears to be providing care to immigrant communities and communities of color … It can be seen as a longstanding and concerted effort on the part of the state to make people afraid to seek care or provide care or support to their friends and loved ones who need care.
“I think the intended outcome here is that people who need abortion care be afraid to look for support or involve their loved ones or anybody else in finding support so they eventually give up and give birth,” Diaz-Tello said. “Unfortunately there are a lot of folks for whom pregnancy is a dangerous condition. We’ve seen in Texas and elsewhere that abortion bans are causing people fear. They’re causing delays and denials of care that are putting their lives in danger.”
Waller County District Attorney Sean Whittmore said in a statement that Paxton’s office brought him the Rojas case two months ago and he appointed an attorney in Paxton’s office as a special prosecutor.
The Texas attorney general does not have criminal prosecution power unless a case is referred to him from another county or he is invited to join a case.
“In Texas, the law is sacred,” Paxton said in a statement. “I will always do everything in my power to protect the unborn, defend our state’s pro-life laws and work to ensure that unlicensed individuals endangering the lives of women by performing illegal abortions are fully prosecuted. Texas law protecting life is clear, and we will hold those who violate it accountable.”
The charges against Rojas and Ley stem from alleged abortions performed this year on Harris County residents. Paxton’s release did not clarify whether Rojas was accused of performing medical or surgical abortions but court documents obtained by Houston media outlets suggest Rojas administered an abortion pill to at least one of the women seeking relief.
A Spanish website for Rojas’ business, Clinicas Latinoamericanos, lists locations in Cypress, Waller and Spring and says services offered include procedures and minor surgeries, laboratory analysis, ultrasounds and nutrition.
In a public statement, Paxton criticized Ley’s citizenship status, saying that the accused is a Cuban national who entered the United States illegally in 2022 and “was later paroled under the open borders policies enacted by the lawless Biden administration.”
It’s no coincidence that the first arrests related to Texas’ abortion ban involve persons of color from another country, Sussman said. Rojas is also reportedly from Cuba and met Ley through Doctors Without Borders, but Paxton has not publicly criticized her citizenship.
“He’s preying on anti-immigrant rhetoric and xenophobic rhetoric in his own press release,” Sussman said. “People’s rights and our ability to be treated humanely in this country, it’s all connected. I think this was absolutely not a coincidence. He’s trying to build public support for what he’s doing.”
Polls suggest that Texans do not support Paxton’s aggressive approach to abortion, she added.
“This is the same attorney general who has openly sought out men — husbands, ex-husbands, boyfriends, ex-boyfriends — of people who have had abortions to report them,” she said. “There seems to be no end in sight for what he is willing to do. I just question if there isn’t anything he could be doing better with his office, with the taxpayer resources that he has, than to seek out information by asking people to report their family members and their partners for getting an abortion. It is such a relentless agenda, as if there were no other concerns in the state of Texas that he could be addressing.”
The arrests of Rojas and Ley are not the first in connection with the Waller County investigation. Rubildo Labanino Matos, 54, was arrested March 8 upon returning to the U.S. from Cuba. Matos, a nurse practitioner whose license is on probation with a state board, was charged with conspiracy to practice medicine without a license.
Paxton said this week an extensive investigation by his law enforcement division remains ongoing.
Illegally performing an abortion is a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Practicing medicine without a license is a third-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and fines up to $10,000. Paxton has said he can seek at least $100,000 in civil penalties for every illegal abortion someone is found to have helped provide.