Keeping a close eye on this.
Attorneys for Maria Rojas, the Texas midwife accused of providing illegal abortions, asked an appeals court to reverse a temporary injunction that prevents her from practicing medicine while her landmark case moves through the justice system.
The arguments made in front of the Texas 15th Court of Appeals have no direct bearing on the criminal case involving Rojas. Rather, the hourlong hearing was an early opportunity for her lawyers to attack the work done by the Texas Attorney General’s Office in the first-of-its-kind prosecution under Texas’ 2022 law that created a near-total ban on abortion.
Marc Hearron, Rojas’ attorney and the interim associate director of litigation for the Center for Reproductive Rights, told the justices that the AG’s office hadn’t done enough to prove that an abortion even happened in order to get a court’s injunction.
[…]
In filings leading up to arguments, Rojas’ attorneys said the AG’s office was relying on anonymous tips and the observations of a Medicaid fraud investigator who staked out her clinics for their charges. Among other things, they argued that the drugs Rojas is alleged to have given women had legal uses, including treating miscarriages.
Much of the hearing involved technical legal arguments.
Hearron focused on arguments that Waller County District Judge Gary Chaney didn’t include specifics about Rojas’ alleged conduct or the injunction against her when he issued his ruling.
“The order is devoid of any underlying facts,” Hearron said.
Jeffrey Stephens, an assistant solicitor general, argued that the injunction was within the state’s authority and that the injunction was in the state’s interest in stopping abortions from happening.
Prosecutors said in charging documents that Rojas was using other people’s names to prescribe medications. One of her employees, a Cuban national, allegedly admitted to acting as a doctor, even though he was not licensed in the United States.
There was no testimony or new evidence presented during the hearing.
Chief Justice Scott Brister and Justices Scott Field and April Farris occasionally interrupted the attorneys as they delivered their arguments. At one point, Field said that the court record arguing why Rojas should be subject to an injunction was “very thin on the evidence.”
“There’s not a lot there,” Field said, and suggested the trial court should have explained the merits of the injunction in its order. “Isn’t that the very type of case where we need a trial court to explain why there’s a probability of success?”
See here for all previous blogging on the topic. The defense, when it has had the chance to speak on what happened, has repeatedly criticized the indictments and the injunction over the shoddiness of the investigation and the weakness of the evidence. The Observer had an in-depth preview article before the appellate hearing.
A native of Peru, where she practiced OB-GYN care, and a certified midwife in Texas since 2018, Rojas has overseen more than 700 births in hospital and community-based settings, including at one of her clinics, the Houston Birth House. In January 2025, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission received an anonymous complaint claiming two abortions were performed at another of Rojas’ clinics, Clinica Waller LatinoAmerica. This spurred the Medicaid Fraud Division within the attorney general’s office to investigate. Investigators surveilled Rojas’ clinics for months and say they identified a patient (named as “E.G.” in court documents) who claimed to have been given abortion pills under Rojas’ care after being told her pregnancy had a low chance of viability. Investigators also say they found a medicine bottle containing misoprostol, a drug that can induce abortion.
In an 84-page appeal—part of the civil case, which state attorneys have successfully transferred into an appeals court custom-made by the GOP Legislature in 2023 for litigation involving the state—Rojas’ attorneys criticize investigators for their lack of medical expertise and point out their surveillance was limited to outside the clinic: “Investigators never observed any medical practice by anyone inside the clinics,” they write. Moreover, without any tangible proof, E.G.’s statements to the investigator amount to hearsay, a conclusion Republican Waller County District Judge Gary Chaney—who issued the injunction in the civil case and is also presiding over the criminal case—has appeared to agree with so far. As for the misoprostol, the low dose found (one-fourth of what would typically be given) is “inconsistent” with abortion care. The drug can be prescribed to patients for a range of medical purposes including treatment of ulcers, miscarriage management, or to prevent hemorrhaging. Investigators also didn’t find mifepristone, which is given in combination with misoprostol as part of a two-drug abortion medication regimen.
“[State investigators] did not report finding mifepristone, the tools that would be used in a surgical abortion, or patient records indicating that any patient had received an abortion,” the attorneys write. “They did not find any documents anywhere indicating that abortions were being offered at the clinics.”
While the state is trying to criminally charge Rojas with practicing medicine without a license, lawyers point out she never claimed to be a physician, but rather a midwife, someone who offers holistic reproductive healthcare during pregnancy, labor, delivery, and postpartum. She was licensed as a midwife, and midwives like her are allowed to provide prescription drugs under a licensed physician, as she did.
“None of the state’s arguments add up, yet Paxton has labeled Rojas and her colleagues ‘abortion-loving radicals’ and said ‘Let’s just throw them all in jail’,” said Hearron. “It’s ridiculous.”
There’s more to both stories (Chron gift link for the first one) so read the rest. I feel like a lot is riding on this. It’s one thing for there to be such draconian anti-abortion laws, and another thing entirely for the Attorney General, who is primarily a civil attorney and not a criminal one, to leverage speculative evidence and a friendly DA into half-baked charges. We all know he’s trying to win a Republican primary, right? Under the best of circumstances he’s a mediocre lawyer. I hope the 15th does its job and doesn’t give him any benefit of the doubt that he hasn’t earned.
UPDATE: Here’s an overview of the case and the historic issues prosecutors have had in the past with similar cases from law professor Mary Ziegler at Slate.