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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.
The arrest of health care workers is Texas’s latest move to distinguish itself as a pioneer when it comes to the removal of vital reproductive health care — and in the most violent of ways. Both in terms of legislative attacks, and Paxton’s campaign to use every pernicious law on the books to punish those providing and seeking abortion care, Texas continues to set a chilling, reactionary standard.
Rojas, known as “Dr. Maria,” is a nurse practitioner who has been a licensed midwife in the US since 2018; she previously worked as an obstetrician in Peru. She owns and, before her arrest, operated four health care clinics in the Houston area called Clínicas Latinoamericanas, which predominantly serve low-income Spanish-speaking patients.
It is no accident that Paxton would target a minority community already demonized in the right’s anti-immigrant discourse.
“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 Jessica Valenti, a journalist who covers reproductive rights. Valenti noted, regarding the unscrupulous Republican strategy, “Let’s make sure to prove them wrong.”
In a statement, Paxton said, “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.”
Rojas is not, however, facing charges for harming or endangering any women. Most abortions are exceedingly low risk and do not require a physician on hand; in 18 states, certified midwives can legally perform medication and procedural abortions. Self-managed medication abortions are routinely and safely carried out without any clinical supervision at all.
Paxton, meanwhile, has been active in putting people in extraordinary physical danger. In 2023, a Texas court ruled that Kate Cox, a pregnant mother of two, should be permitted to access an abortion under the state ban’s medical emergencies clause. Under Texas law, abortions are only permitted in cases when the pregnant person is at risk of death or “substantial impairment of a major bodily function.” Cox was carrying a fetus with a fatal genetic condition; doctors advised that Cox’s health and future fertility were at high risk.
Paxton intervened directly, threatening to prosecute any health care provider who aided Cox and appealed to have the court decision blocked. Cox ended up fleeing Texas to access the abortion care she needed.
“Their ultimate goal is to end abortion access for all Texans entirely — and they will throw people in jail to get there.”
“Texas officials have been trying every which way to terrify health care practitioners from providing care and to trap Texans,” said Marc Hearron, interim associate director of ligation at the nonprofit Center for Reproductive Rights, in a statement. “Their ultimate goal is to end abortion access for all Texans entirely — and they will throw people in jail to get there.”
The Texas attorney general is also suing a New York abortion provider for sending abortion medication to a Texas woman. While the doctor is currently protected under New York’s shield laws, Texas is likely to challenge the shield law in federal court. Should Paxton succeed, the future of medication abortion access in ban states is at risk. Paxton, not Dr Maria, is a threat to public health.
Texas has for years been at the forefront of abortion criminalization, forging new and chilling legal realities. Before the Supreme Court struck down Roe, the state passed a devious near-total abortion ban in 2021, designed to evade court challenges by enabling literally any person to file civil lawsuits against an abortion provider or anyone suspected of aiding a person seeking an abortion after six weeks.
“Texas law holds abortion providers — not patients — criminally responsible for unlawful procedures,” Paxton said in his statement on Rojas. It is patients, meanwhile, who suffer when health care providers are criminalized, particularly poor women of color without adequate medical care in general or the means to travel to obtain abortion access. And it is not for want of trying that Republicans have yet to normalize the prosecution of abortion-seekers. A Texas state lawmaker introduced a bill earlier this year that would classify self-managed abortion as homicide.
