A midwife in Texas could face up to 20 years in prison for providing reproductive health care in the state, which has one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans. The arrest of Maria Margarita Rojas marks the first criminal case against an alleged abortion provider in Texas since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022 — and a major escalation in the far right’s war against bodily autonomy.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Monday that Rojas, 48, had been arrested on charges of providing illegal abortions and practicing medicine without a license. One of her employees, Jose Ley, was also arrested for providing an abortion and practicing without a license. Providing an abortion in Texas is punishable by up to life in prison and up to $100,000 in civil fines.
Hot take, but anyone should be arrested for this, regardless of what procedure they were doing.
(Assuming the states ‘Good Samaritan’ laws doesn’t protect them from practicing otherwise.)
Edit: Everybody is forgetting that back alley abortions used to be a horrible thing, stopped for a reason. Find other ways to protest, keep people safe.
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Normally I’d agree
Given that in other states, nps are qualified to provide abortions (and they can apparently own medical clinics in this one), this seems more like an issue caused by the laws in Texas than helped by them.
All you need is a license to practice medicine to run a clinic, and that’s the point of being an NP. They’re a business like any other. You don’t need anything to own it because capitalism.
I’m not really comfortable with NPs taking over so many duties in primary care that directly involved MDs should at least be reviewing but honestly the system is so fucked it hardly matters, whatever it takes so people can get any care at all
If midwives are “licensed” to do that procedure, then they shouldn’t be using that as an excuse for their arrest. Would just depend how the laws are written, really.
Bottom line though, if you’re not legally cleared to do the procedure, then you should be arrested if you do the procedure.
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The procedure is banned, nobody’s licensed to do it anymore. If you’ve trained as an obstetrician and midwife and can do a lifesaving procedure which has now been banned because politicians got worried that not enough people show up to church, I think it’s absolutely your right to get upset for being arrested for it. The other option is for someone who took the Hippocratic oath to sit and watch people needlessly die for politics.
I don’t think she’s surprised, because it’s not surprising, but it’s sure as hell upsetting.
Fair enough, but if she’s not surprised, and knows it’s illegal, I’m not sure what else to say, except for, if you’re going to protest you might get arrested for the protest, especially if that protest is practicing medicine without a license for the procedure.
You want to protest a law do it another way. Transport the people to another state where they can have it done legally, if it’s feasible to do so healthwise. And yes I’m aware there’s probably a law against transporting them, but it’s a lot less risky protest than practicing medicine on someone without a license to do it.
Otherwise campaign to have elected officials that won’t pass laws like that.
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That depends. She’s a trained obstetrician, she probably knows when moving the patient is better than not (and yes, anyone can sue you for $10k for helping someone over state lines for the purpose of getting an abortion). There’s also the possibility that it’s a ten or more hour drive to the nearest clinic, which comes with a significant time and gas money commitment that some people would find it difficult to impossible to make. I agree that performing medicine is not the most effective protest, but it’s totally the most effective way of making sure that your vulnerable patients get medical care.
Campaigning against abortion bans is great, but how many women will die before the next election? I don’t think I’d be willing to comply with the law and watch them as a doctor, and I hope most doctors would agree, because I’d personally far prefer to get treatment than follow the laws in an emergency.
Well I can totally agree with this, life is greater than law. I would assume Good Samaritan laws would protect anyone practicing medicine without a license in that case.
But if someone is constantly doing a procedure where death is not imminent, then that’s something different, and it should only be done by license personnel.
There’s two different scenarios described (risk of immediate death, vs not), and what I’ve seen done usually by people who support protesting by regularly doing the procedure, is that they mix those two scenarios together, in essence creating a legal loophole.
Save lives, definitely do it. Just protesting, you better be licensed.
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Hot take, but the GOP has been using the technicality of shitty laws they pass to give cover for your hot take.
Parsing up the fine details of this completely avoidable, ridiculously stupid action taken by Texas officials is important to having an honest conversation
Vote them out. And if you can’t, then deal with it (protest verbally, etc.), or move to another place without those lawmakers.
I have no problem talking about it. Seeing back alley abortions be a thing again, not so much.
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Killing fascists is a very good alternative to voting them out
That’s completely disingenuous. These are clinics being run in the city of Houston, not back alleys.
And you’re not having an honest conversation. You’re pushing why the law should be followed, not discussing the environment created by unjust laws. If you truly didn’t want back alley abortions, you would be defending this person’s right to maintain facilities in the light of day as they have been even in the face of this unjust law.
I know that, in this specific case. But a location doesn’t make a surgical procedure safe, if a person is not licensed to do it. It gives better odds, more resources are available during the procedure.
I’m speaking to the history of non-sanctioned surgical procedures, specifically abortions, done by people who are not licensed medical practitioners, in general.
The person doing the procedure matters more than where the procedure is being done at.
I am. What you said about me is not true, at all. You are misinterpreting what I said, not paying attention to the nuance of what I’m saying.
You missed the point I’m making, and then accuse me of duplicity on the point you want me to make.
Exactly. That’s not the point I’m trying to make.
Medicine should not be practiced by those who are not licensed to do it, under most circumstance (emergencies is ok, etc.), because of the history that that scenario has had. That’s the only point I’m making.
For the record, I’m pro-choice. But this conversation wasn’t about how she can continue to protest (even though I did make suggestions along those lines, like transporting people out of state to get the abortions done). This conversation was about allowing anyone to do abortions, versus only those who are licensed practitioners.
If you want to start a different conversation elsewhere (your own post), I’d be glad to join in on that.
I do defend their right to choice.
I don’t defend the right of back alley abortions to happen.
They are not mutually exclusive.
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If you don’t want back-alley abortions to become the norm, then you must be in favor of Roe V. Wade, no? Making legal abortions illegal, will only increase the number of back alley abortions.
I’ve already discussed this point elsewhere, in this conversation.
I’ve already discussed this point elsewhere, in this conversation.
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You’re up and down this thread misrepresenting the facts here.
These are medication abortions, and the safety of those procedures is pretty well established, especially when supervised at a clinic. There’s no surgery involved.
No, I"m not. I’m expressing an opinion on a general topic, not speaking specifically about this case. This specific case was just a trigger for me to comment generally.
The article is paywalled, and I cannot read it, so I’m determining my opinion based on what I read in the summary of this post …
She wouldn’t have been arrested for dispensing legally obtainable pills, normaly. The patient would just order the meds online and take them themselves.
Someone else weaponizing laws for political gains is a different conversation.
Not for the mid/late-term ones.
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So, you don’t have anything relevant to this conversation. And there’s quite a few ways to get around a paywall these days; that’s a terrible excuse, just makes you sound insincere from the get go.
Here’s a suggestion: how about instead of forming your opinion based on known incomplete data, you decide instead to just, like, not form an opinion at all until you get that information, much less spout off based on your own speculation.
???
They made abortion illegal in Texas. She performed abortions in the manner that is legal elsewhere, using a procedure that matches the standard of care where it is legal, under training and qualifications that are sufficient elsewhere. So she was arrested for dispensing pills normally and in the manner that they are regulated elsewhere. This is the safe and legal method elsewhere, and was the safe and legal method in Texas until recently.
Comparing it to back alley abortions is intentionally misleading to the point of dishonesty.
She…didn’t perform any of those. I’m going off of the facts of what she is being accused of doing in the criminal charges.
You say the same thing to everyone else who’s responding with comments in this post?
Instead of blaming a victim, why don’t you get on the case of whoever made the post, for having an incomplete summary instead.
Please show me in the summary for the article that this post was about where it states that?
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The summary contained what the person who posted it thought was important. You thought something else was important and then started making up conjecture about that, instead of looking it up yourself.
This is clown behavior. You’re not a victim of anything but your own ignorance. Digging in your heels, intentionally obtuse to the facts of the story you want to speculate about, is not productive. If you didn’t know, you’re welcome to look up the facts yourself, instead of claiming in multiple comments throughout this thread that this lady was a midwife performing surgical abortions, and that the actual charged conduct compares to the days of back alley abortions.
https://www.khou.com/article/news/local/texas/houston-texas-midwife-arrested-abortions-clinics/285-b028b728-0db8-4e4f-9255-7f6f11c77f47
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/17/texas-abortion-midwife-arrested/
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/texas-midwife-abortion-investigation-update-20227667.php
https://www.thecut.com/article/texas-abortion-arrest-maria-margarita-rojas-midwife.html
You’re welcome.
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That’s reasonable, but it’s a red herring. Many states enable midwives to perform abortion care.
Apparently it’s not a red herring in Texas though. Just depends on how the laws are written there, how much a midwife can do or not.
Bottom line, if you’re not legally cleared to do the procedure, then you should be arrested if you do the procedure.
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This abortion would have been illegal regardless of who performed the procedure due to Texas’ bans on abortion. In states like Texas, women have died when doctors have been confident of the medical necessity of an abortion, but unclear of their legal clearance. This isn’t a doctors vs midwives issue.
Legalistic fuckery aside:
Do you make all your moral choices based on the written law of Texas?
No, but I do make them based on the written law of wherever I’m at.
And as I’ve mentioned already (further down), morally, life is greater than law.
But you can’t open the floodgates to anybody practicing surgery on others for protest reasons. We were there before, with back alley abortions, many that went bad. The laws are there for a reason. (Politicians abusing laws is a different matter.)
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Under the circumstances I don’t mind