On Monday, a Texas judge sentenced Dallas man Harold Thompson to life in prison. Thompson’s sentencing comes after a jury convicted him of killing his partner, Gabriela Gonzalez, for having an abortion.
Texas has enforced a total abortion ban since 2022, and a near-total ban since 2021. In May 2023, Gonzalez traveled to Colorado for the procedure. According to affidavits for Thompson’s arrest, the following day when she returned, he confronted her while the two were in a parking garage. At one point, he placed her in a chokehold. Gonzalez broke free, but shortly after, Thompson fatally shot her several times and fled the scene. Investigators determined that Thompson killed Gonzalez for her decision to have an abortion.
Before Thompson shot Gonzalez, he reportedly had a history of abusing her. Affidavits show he’d previously punched and tried to strangle her, which domestic violence experts say is the highest predictor of murder. Just earlier that month, after a reported altercation, Thompson told police officers Gonzalez was pregnant with his child and admitted that he struck her.
“I knew she wasn’t OK, but we couldn’t help, we didn’t know how,” Gonzalez’s sister told NBC 5 shortly after her death. “He was so angry that she wanted to get away from him. She would always tell me that she wanted to leave, but that she couldn’t.“
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, 70 women every month are shot and killed by an intimate partner. Pregnancy is the most dangerous time for people experiencing domestic violence, and homicide is a leading cause of death for pregnant people in the U.S. Individuals who seek and are denied abortion care are more likely to face domestic violence.
HuffPost’s Alanna Vagianos pointed out that Texas is forcing victims to remain pregnant while simultaneously relaxing gun laws in recent years: The state, she wrote, “has made it easier for a man to obtain a gun to kill his partner than it is for a woman to access abortion care.” Between 2018 and 2022, the number of Texas women who were shot and killed by an abuser doubled. Firearm-related intimate partner violence situations increased by 47% in Texas from 2022 to 2023.
The Texas Council on Family Violence told Jezebel that, between 2017 and 2023, it had tracked 72 Texas women killed by their intimate partners when they were pregnant or within one year postpartum. And in May, a new study showed a direct link between anti-abortion laws that are designed to shut down abortion clinics (called “TRAP” laws, which stands for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) and risk of intimate partner violence-related homicide.
Since Gonzalez’s murder in 2023, domestic violence experts, as well as reproductive rights advocates, have said it’s possible Thompson would have killed Gonzalez whether abortion was legal in Texas or not. But it’s also possible that the added necessity of leaving the state made her abortion more difficult to conceal, producing a deadly outcome.
If you or someone you know are experiencing domestic violence and seeking options to safely access abortion care, you can get support from the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or thehotline.org, or If/When/How’s Repro Legal Helpline at 844-868-2812 or here.
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