Mug shot of Lizelle Herrera, 26, arrested for aborting a fetus. Photo: Police mug shot
On April 8, 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera was arrested and charged with murder by the sheriff of Starr County, Texas. The indictment filed by the sheriff said Herrera had been charged in connection with the “death of an individual through a self-induced abortion.” She was put in the Starr County jail, with bail set at $500,000.
On Saturday morning, a small protest was held in front of the sheriff’s office. The charge of murder for an alleged abortion, and the outrageous bail set on Herrera, began to get widespread media attention, and shocked countless people in the U.S. and worldwide. The Frontera Fund, a pro-choice group in South Texas, raised money for Lizelle’s bail, and she was released from jail on Saturday, April 9.
Then, on Sunday, April 10, Gocha Allen Ramirez, Starr County’s District Attorney, announced that the murder charge against Lizelle Herrera had been dropped. Ramirez tweeted that “In reviewing applicable Texas law, it is clear that Ms. Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted for the allegation against her.”
A Concentrated Expression of Female Enslavement
When news of Lizelle Herrera’s arrest became known, leaders and initiators of Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights immediately issued a press release denouncing it. Sunsara Taylor said, “The real crime is not Lizelle Herrera allegedly self-inducing an abortion. The real crime is the coercive power of the state being used to force women to have children they do not want or go to dangerous, desperate measures to prevent it. This is female enslavement! We must Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights now so that this is does not become the future for women everywhere.”
Merle Hoffman said, “Lizelle Herrera’s arrest is the expected and predicted result of the draconian misogynist state laws that are metastasizing across this country. As with the Hyde Amendment, it is always the poor, the young and women of color who are the first and eternal victims. We do not need a ‘heartbeat bill’ to tell us that Ms. Herrera is a ‘human individual,’ a woman like all women who must have the right to decide when and whether to be a mother. They can call this ‘pro-life,’ I call it slavery. The power of the state must stop at our skin.”
Sunsara Taylor (left) and Sikivu Hutchinson (right)
Criminalizing Abortion—Not the Law YET
In the same tweet quoted above, Gocha Ramirez also claimed that to him, it “is clear that the Starr County Sheriff's Department did their duty in investigating the incident brought to their attention by the reporting hospital.”
Did their duty? Ramirez knows full well that arresting women for “self-abortion” is not the law in Texas. Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas, told Texas Public Radio that “The Texas murder statute … [does not apply to] cases where the person who terminated the fetus is the pregnant woman.”
By any decent moral standard, there should be no punishment of any sort for a woman seeking or attempting an abortion, or those who assist them. And there is no law in Texas—now!!!—that justifies the horrific arrest and murder charges against Lizelle Herrera by the sheriffs, nor the enormous bail that was set.
And, even if the charges are dismissed, tremendous harm was already done to Herrera by arresting her, charging her, and shaming her in front of the world when what she needed was compassionate medical attention. Further, terror was inflicted on women everywhere who might, out of desperation and lack of legal abortion, seek to induce their own abortions or simply suffer a miscarriage. And, this incident gives a sense of how zealous a section of those who wield the power of the state are to viciously punish women if people do not stand up and defeat the escalating assault on abortion rights.
Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights has launched an effort to “Take to the Streets and Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights NOW!” in the days and weeks ahead, as a Supreme Court decision on a draconian Mississippi anti-abortion law looms. That decision could overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion in the U.S. Lori Sokol, also an initiator and leader of Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, said in the press release issued on April 10 that “This may be our very last chance to stop the increasing assault on women’s reproductive justice. If we don’t stand up and step out now, to show the U.S. Supreme Court that we will not allow them to turn back women’s right to legal abortion, women will die, and the blood will be on our hands.”
