8 More People Arrested in Texas’ Anti-Abortion Witch Hunt

In March, a midwife became the first person charged under the state’s near-total abortion ban since Roe was overturned. On Wednesday, AG Ken Paxton announced more arrests tied to her clinics.

By Danielle Han | October 9, 2025 | 2:30pm

Photo: Getty Images Abortion Politics

8 More People Arrested in Texas’ Anti-Abortion Witch Hunt

In March, Texas anti-abortion Attorney General Ken Paxton had a midwife arrested for allegedly performing illegal abortions, the first person charged under the state’s near-total ban since Roe v. Wade was overturned. In September, she was indicted on 15 felony charges. And on Wednesday, Paxton’s office boasted that it had arrested eight other people in connection with her Houston-area health clinics.

Maria Margarita Rojas was charged with 12 counts of practicing medicine without a license and three counts of performing an abortion; two of her other employees were also detained at the time. The eight new arrests were employees similarly indicted for practicing medicine without a license. In the announcement, Paxton’s office grossly made it a point to say that “several” of the individuals were “foreign nationals.”

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“This cabal of abortion-loving radicals has been running illegal clinics staffed with unlicensed individuals who endangered the very people they pretended to help,” Paxton wrote in the off-the-rails press release. “These dens of fake doctors will not be allowed to operate in Texas.” (Speaking of cabals purporting fake science…)

Paxton filed his original injunction after getting investigators to stalk Rojas’ clinics for months, before eventually finding a complaint from a patient who allegedly claimed the midwife had given her misoprostol (the second pill in the two-pill medication abortion regimen) and falsely identified herself as an OB-GYN. But Rojas’ lawyers have argued that while Texas prosecutors are basing most of their case on Rojas possessing misoprostol, the drug is also used for a variety of other reproductive health reasons besides terminating a pregnancy.

“The case against Maria Rojas is a sham,” Jenna Hudson, Senior Counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told Jezebel in a statement. “To claim this is about protecting women’s health is laughable—women are going septic and nearly dying in hospitals because of Texas’ abortion ban—and Paxton couldn’t care less. He has thrown together a shoddy case to score political points.”

In March, Paxton shut down Rojas’ three clinics—which served an overwhelmingly low-income and Spanish-speaking community— and they remain closed. Speaking to Abortion, Every Day, Rafa Kidvai, director of If/When/How’s Repro Legal Defense Fund, said the state is “using every tool at their disposal to paint people who are a part of and serve immigrant populations as villains.”

Texas has one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country, which threatens health care providers with life in prison, a $100,000 fine, and the loss of their license. It offers zero exceptions for rape or incest, and only a very narrow and vague exception to save the pregnant person’s life.

“This is an escalation of Texas’ scare campaign against doctors and healthcare workers,” continues Hudson. “Texas health care workers deserve respect, not to be treated like criminals.”

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