The Guy Suing a California Doctor for Allegedly Sending Abortion Pills Into Texas Has a History of Violence Against Women

Jerry Rodriguez has been convicted of attacking or harassing at least two women and was arrested in 2025 for allegedly beating and strangling a third woman. 

By Danielle Han  |  February 24, 2026 | 1:51pm
Photo: iStockphoto AbortionPolitics
The Guy Suing a California Doctor for Allegedly Sending Abortion Pills Into Texas Has a History of Violence Against Women

Legal terrorist Jonathan Mitchell has made his name as the anti-abortion architect of both Texas’ abortion law and the bounty hunter law SB8; as the first anti-abortion litigator to pounce on a “wrongful death” lawsuit after Dobbs; the lawyer doggedly trying to dox abortion patients (and people who donate to abortion funds); and as a a strong proponent of terror tactics when it comes to intimidating women out of getting abortions. So… it should be no surprise that the people he seeks out to sue their partners for having abortions also have a predatory history. 

On Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Jerry Rodriguez, the plaintiff in Mitchell’s ongoing lawsuit against California-based Dr. Remy Coeytaux, had been dodging a felony arrest warrant in the months before he became famous for being Mitchell’s client.

In October 2024, Rodriguez’s then-girlfriend told police officers that he tried to strangle her in a motel room. After berating her about money, the woman said he slammed her to the floor by her neck, punched or slapped her about 12 times, and “squeezed her throat” like he wanted to “crush it.” She also said that Rodriguez “strangled her 8 times” during the five months they dated, and would make “threats that he will kill her and that will make her his ‘15th’ kill,” according to the police report. 

One month later, Rodriguez reportedly called police to say his then-girlfriend was lying about the allegations of abuse, when a detective brought up his prior convictions. He’d previously pleaded guilty to striking a woman—whom he’d been living with—in the mouth in 2006, and pleaded guilty to harassment after “repeatedly” threatening to kill a different woman in 2009. Both crimes were considered misdemeanors, and he spent two days in jail.
 
According to records obtained by the outlet, he admitted to the detective that he knew of the warrant for his arrest, but refused to share his whereabouts. He went dark for about eight months before resurfacing with Mitchell at his side. While he was arrested in July on the felony assault charge, he made bail the next day, and in September, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office filed a motion to dismiss the charge. The Chronicle suggests it happened after court officers lost contact with the victim. 

Also in July, Mitchell filed a lawsuit in federal court against Coeytaux for allegedly prescribing two rounds of abortion pills to Rodriguez’s girlfriend, which she used to end her pregnancy. He alleged the woman, who was separated but not divorced, was coerced by her ex-husband to take the medication, alleging Coeytaux is responsible for “wrongful death.” (Jezebel is choosing not to name the woman, and a redacted version of the original complaint can be found here.) According to Rodriguez, his girlfriend was pregnant again when he filed the lawsuit to ask the judge to preemptively block Coeytaux from mailing abortion pills for a third time.

The suit specifically targets shield laws, which allow providers and doctors in states where abortion is still allowed to prescribe abortion pills to patients in states where it’s banned. Mitchell also invoked the Comstock Act of 1873 in the suit, attempting to use the dormant zombie law to potentially trigger a federal abortion ban.

In January, the nightmare duo updated their lawsuit to include House Bill 7, or the “The Women and Child Protection Act,” which is another bounty hunter bill that allows anyone in Texas to sue anybody who “manufactures, distributes, mails, transports, delivers, prescribes, or provides” abortion pills for as much as $100,000. (Women who take the pill cannot sue or collect the money for any reason.) In other words, Rodriguez saw an opportunity to make hundreds of thousands, and he took it.

“The anti-abortion movement is trying everything possible to have mifepristone taken off the market nationwide or become much harder to get,” Center for Reproductive Rights President and CEO Nancy Northup said in a statement to Jezebel following the updated lawsuit. “[HB8] is one of many meant to cut off access to abortion pills, which are a lifeline for women in post-Roe America.”

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