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niyad

(113,323 posts)
Sat Apr 9, 2022, 01:54 PM Apr 2022

Woman Arrested for Abortion in Texas, Held on Half-Million-Dollar Bond: 'This Arrest Is Inhumane'


Woman Arrested for Abortion in Texas, Held on Half-Million-Dollar Bond: ‘This Arrest Is Inhumane’
4/9/2022 by Carrie N. Baker

On Thursday, April 7, Texas police arrested a woman and charged her with murder for "******allegedly self-inducing an abortion using pills.****** The woman, 26-year old Lizelle Herrera who lives near the Texas-Mexico border, is being held in Starr County jail on a $500,000 bond.“This arrest is inhumane. We are demanding the immediate release of Lizelle Herrera,” said Rockie Gonzalez, founder and board chair of Frontera Fund, a Rio Grande Valley-based abortion assistance fund. “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.”La Frontera Fund held a protest outside the Starr County Jail on Saturday morning, April 9, demanding the immediate release of Herrera.
“This is a developing story and we don’t yet know all the details surrounding this tragic event,” Gonzalez said. “What we do know is that criminalizing pregnant people’s choices or pregnancy outcomes, which the state of Texas has done, takes away people’s autonomy over their own bodies, and leaves them with no safe options when they choose not to become a parent.”


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The murder charge is an extreme and unprecedented misuse of Texas law that is in direct conflict with the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade in 1973. Texas does not have a law that makes self-inducing an abortion a crime (three states do—Oklahoma, South Carolina and Nevada). Two recent laws restricting abortion in the state—Senate Bill 8 and Senate Bill 4—explicitly exempt pregnant women. Senate Bill 8, enacted on September 1, 2021, purports to ban abortion at roughly six weeks with no exceptions for rape or incest. The law, however, is only enforceable by private parties bringing civil suits against people who “aid and abet” women to get an abortion and the law explicitly exempts pregnant women from prosecution. Federal and state courts have dismissed lawsuits attempting to block the law on grounds that it is not enforceable by the state. Texas also enacted Senate Bill 4 on December 1, 2021, making it a crime for doctors to prescribe abortion pills to patients who are more than seven weeks pregnant or who mail abortion pills to a patient at any time of pregnancy. Violating the law is a felony punishable by up to two years in jail and a fine of $10,000. But the law applies only to doctors and explicitly exempts pregnant women from criminal penalties.

Despite these explicit exemptions, the Starr County Sheriff’s Office arrested and jailed Herrera “on the charge of murder after [she] did then and there intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an******* individual****** by self-induced abortion.” The prosecution of Herrera is not the first time extreme, politically-motivated prosecutors have stretched the law in order to punish women who end their own pregnancies. The organization If/When/How, which fights to halt the criminalization of people who self-manage their abortions, has uncovered 18 arrests of people who end their own pregnancies and those who have supported them.
Prosecutors in these cases often use antiquated laws or laws meant to protect, not arrest, pregnant people, such as feticide laws that explicitly exempt pregnant women or other generally applicable laws such as child neglect, practicing medicine on oneself, or possession of a dangerous substance. People targeted are disproportionately low-income women, immigrants, Latinas and Black women.

. . . . .


https://msmagazine.com/2022/04/09/woman-arrested-abortion-texas-mexico-murder-lizelle-herrera/
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Woman Arrested for Abortion in Texas, Held on Half-Million-Dollar Bond: 'This Arrest Is Inhumane' (Original Post) niyad Apr 2022 OP
The crazy team considers all miscarriages to be suspect, sanatanadharma Apr 2022 #1
Exactly!! niyad Apr 2022 #2
Still mad at Hillary for her emails? Couldn't bring yourself to vote for her? Thunderbeast Apr 2022 #3

sanatanadharma

(3,707 posts)
1. The crazy team considers all miscarriages to be suspect,
Sat Apr 9, 2022, 02:30 PM
Apr 2022

Expect many more such "round-up the usual suspects" arrests in the usual suspect states with their extremely unusual weltanschauung.

The crazy team considers all miscarriages to be suspect, you know, because God never makes mistakes, so it must be the woman's fault.

Thunderbeast

(3,414 posts)
3. Still mad at Hillary for her emails? Couldn't bring yourself to vote for her?
Sat Apr 9, 2022, 02:47 PM
Apr 2022

Threee SCOTUS appointments by Trump made this ALL possible.

Liberal purists f#%ked us all. Time to grow up and vote in the real world.

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