On March 16, Ken Paxton, the Christian fascist attorney general of Texas, announced the arrest of Maria Margarita Rojas. Rojas, a licensed midwife, was charged with “allegedly performing illegal abortions and practicing medicine illegally,” according to the Houston Chronicle. Both charges are felonies.
Rojas owns and operated three clinics for women in the outer reaches of Harris County (greater Houston) and in neighboring (and mainly rural) Waller County. Most of the people who came to these clinics were Spanish-speaking immigrants. Two people who worked at the clinics face charges similar to Rojas’s.
The law that Rojas is charged under outlaws virtually all abortions in the state of Texas. It puts the body of every woman and girl in the state in the control of lunatic Christian fundamentalist misogynists (woman-haters) like Paxton. It also encourages snitching—by offering $10,000 “rewards” from the state to people who file successful civil charges against alleged abortion providers. When this law was passed in 2021, Revolution wrote, “We need to call this fascist Texas law for what it is: Forced motherhood is enslavement of half of humanity!”
This law is a concentrated expression of a core part of the Amerikkka that fascists like Trump and Paxton are fighting to shape the entire country to be—a nightmare where women are subjugated to men in all realms of society and life… regarded and used as breeders… and forced to submit to a brutally enforced male patriarchy. Maria Rojas is the first person charged with allegedly violating this law.
Anonymous “Tips,” Stakeouts, Trash Bag Searches… but No Evidence
The circumstances of Rojas’s arrest are absurdly vague. KHOU, a CBS affiliate in Houston, reported that “court documents… reveal how an anonymous tip in January prompted the months-long investigation.” An unnamed woman told the authorities Rojas had directed her to have a “medication abortion.” Investigators from Paxton’s office then began surveillance of Rojas. They “staked out” her home and clinics, and went through trash bags. There is no indication that they found any physical evidence of abortions performed at any of her clinics.
The KHOU report continues that the anonymous source was told by staff members at the clinic that Rojas described herself as a doctor. (She is not, and is not known to have ever promoted herself as one.) Days after Rojas was arrested, CBS News spoke with another midwife, Holly Shearman, who said that she doesn’t “believe it [the charges against Rojas] for one second. I’ve known her for eight years and I’ve never heard her talk about anything like that.” She said Rojas, who is a U.S. citizen, had herself been an immigrant, like most of the women that came to her clinics. Shearman, a white woman, said she thought it was possible Paxton had singled her out for that reason.
“Skyrocketing” Death Rate
Paxton, a world-class hypocrite, said on Rojas’s arrest, "In Texas, life is sacred.” This bullshit comes from a fascist who is part of a state government that has placed razor wire in the Rio Grande to trap and ensnare desperate immigrants trying to cross the border, including children and entire families. He has presided over the legal department of a state where, as NBC News reported, “The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion care—far outpacing a slower rise in maternal mortality across the nation, a new investigation of federal public health data finds.” Since the law went into effect, data for the state’s maternal death rate has not even been examined by a committee that supposedly has that responsibility.1
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The persecution of Maria Margarita Rojas is outrageously repressive, unjust and illegitimate. She has spent her working life providing a needed service to women who otherwise may have had nowhere to turn. She faces over 20 years in state prison.
The fascists who control Texas are moving in lockstep with the Trump MAGA fascists to implement the extreme measures of Texas’s anti-abortion law. If they get away with an “evidence-free” conviction in this case, it will be a green light for further prosecutions of people providing essential services to pregnant women in Texas—and a major stepping stone towards implementing such police-state measures across the country.
What Bob Avakian (BA) wrote some years ago rings with profound truth and urgency today:
The whole question of the position and role of women in society is more and more acutely posing itself in today’s extreme circumstances—this is a powderkeg in the U.S. today. It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms and through extremely violent means. The question yet to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or a radical revolutionary resolution, will it mean the reinforcing of the chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and the opening up of the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement.
