Police arrested a woman in Texas who allegedly performed a “self-induced” abortion.
Lizelle Herrera, 26, was arrested Thursday by the Starr County Sheriff’s Office on murder charges and is behind bars on a $500,000 bond, Texas Public Radio reported. It is unknown how she allegedly terminated her pregnancy.
Herrera “intentionally and knowingly caused the death of an individual by self-induced abortion,” a spokesperson for the Starr County Sheriff’s Office told CBS 4 and NBC 23.
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But others argued the resident of the Lone Star State, which has some of the strictest abortion laws in the country, was being unfairly faulted for a miscarriage.
“This arrest is inhumane. We are demanding the immediate release of Lizelle Herrera,” Rockie Gonzalez, the founder of Frontera Fund, a group that supports access to abortion, told the outlet. “What is alleged is that she was in the hospital and had a miscarriage and divulged some information to hospital staff, who then reported her to the police.”
The stage of Herrera’s pregnancy was not immediately clear.
Last year, Texas passed the “Heartbeat Act” prohibiting abortions in the state after six weeks of gestation except for medical emergencies. Unlike conventional abortion bans, the Texas law relied on private actors to enforce its provisions through civil lawsuits. States are barred from enforcing such a restrictive measure on abortion due to the precedents set under Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The Supreme Court is now mulling a challenge to abortion precedent in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
But private enforcement was not explicitly banned in the precedents, and the Supreme Court declined to strike down the law quickly, so it remains in effect, according to the backers of the Texas law, which allows the public to sue those who aid and abed in illegal abortions for a minimum of $10,000 plus court fees.
Although the law does not explicitly grant the public the right to sue women who terminate their pregnancies, its application is a bit murky for women who perform abortions on themselves. It is unclear whether the Texas Heartbeat Act was used in this case or what legal rationale police used for Herrera’s arrest.
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Texas abortion rates plummeted by about 60% in the first month after the law went into effect, data from the state’s Health and Human Services suggested. But the number of Texas women receiving abortions may be much smaller, with the decline estimated at only 10% due to women getting the procedure out of state, according to several studies reviewed by the New York Times.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Starr County Sheriff’s Office but did not receive a response.
