Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs A midwife and an associate have been arrested and charged with illegally performing abortions in greater Houston, according to court records and the Texas attorney general, apparently the first criminal arrests of abortion providers since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.Ken Paxton, the attorney general in Texas, said in a statement that the midwife, Maria Margarita Rojas, operated clinics in several towns around Houston, including two in Harris County, the state’s most populous county, and one in Waller County, a more rural and conservative jurisdiction where the charges were brought.The statement said that she had been “charged with the illegal performance of an abortion,” which has been a second-degree felony since the state’s near-total abortion ban took effect in 2022. She was also charged with practicing medicine without a license.Court records released late Monday indicated that a person who worked with Ms. Rojas, Jose Ley, 29, was also arrested and charged with the same offenses. The records showed Ms. Rojas and Mr. Ley were being held on $500,000 bond in Waller County, west of Houston, where the charges were brought.Lawyers for Ms. Rojas and Mr. Ley could not immediately be reached. But a friend said that Ms. Rojas had been arrested earlier this month while driving to one of her clinics.“She was on her way to the clinic and got pulled over by the police at gunpoint and handcuffed,” said the friend, a fellow midwife, Holly Shearman, who said she had spoken with Ms. Rojas by phone last week. “She said they wouldn’t tell her what was happening. She said they took her to Austin.”Ms. Shearman recalled that Ms. Rojas had told her that others from the clinic, possibly someone who worked at the front desk, had also been arrested.The bans on abortions around the country have largely relied on the threat of prosecution, with few instances in which criminal cases have actually been filed. Abortion providers in Texas and other states with abortion bans ceased operations after the decision. Women seeking abortions have instead traveled to states where the procedure remains legal or have received abortion medication through the mail.“This is, as far as I know, the first allegation that someone in a ban state is providing an abortion in direct violation of abortion laws,” said Marc Hearron of the Center for Reproductive Rights.In a handful of cases, charges have been brought against people who provided abortion pills to relatives, either with their knowledge or without.The state of Louisiana indicted a New York doctor on criminal charges earlier this year for mailing abortion medications to a Louisiana woman in violation of the state’s ban. New York has resisted requests to extradite the doctor under the state’s shield law, which protects providers from prosecution in states with abortion bans.Texas brought a civil case against the same doctor, Margaret Carpenter, for sending pills to Texas residents. She did not defend herself in that case, and a judge last month ordered her to pay more than $100,000.But the arrest of the midwife in the Houston area went further.“In Texas, life is sacred,” Mr. Paxton said in a statement. “I will always do everything in my power to protect the unborn, defend our state’s pro-life laws and work to ensure that unlicensed individuals endangering the lives of women by performing illegal abortions are fully prosecuted.”Ms. Shearman said Ms. Rojas had been held overnight and then released after her initial arrest. Court records in Waller County, where the charges were filed, indicate she was held in early March on the charge of practicing without a license.The county’s records did not show any new charges for performing an abortion as of late Monday, and the district clerk’s office said it had not yet received any updated records in the case. A deputy at the Waller County sheriff’s office said Ms. Rojas had been brought to the jail on Monday.After her arrest on felony charges of practicing medicine without a license, she was held on a $10,000 bond. The new charges of providing abortions were added on Monday.But Ms. Rojas was not charged with the highest degree of the charge, which occurs when the abortion results in termination of the pregnancy. It was not clear why she had been charged that way. A spokesman for Mr. Paxton did not respond to requests for comment.But in court documents, Ms. Rojas was accused of having “attempted an abortion on” a woman identified as E.G. on two separate occasions in March and that she was “known by law enforcement to have performed an abortion” on another individual earlier this year.Mr. Paxton said his office had also filed for a temporary restraining order to shut down Ms. Rojas’s network of clinics “to prevent further illegal activity.”The latest case, in the Houston area, originated with an investigation conducted in Mr. Paxton’s office, according to the Waller County district attorney, Sean Whittmore, who formerly worked in Mr. Paxton’s office.The attorney general does not have the power to enforce criminal laws on his own but can do so at the request of local district attorneys, essentially becoming a partner to them in a case. That’s what took place here, Mr. Whittmore said.According to the website for one of her clinics, Ms. Rojas, 49, was born in Peru, has been a certified midwife in Texas since 2018 and has “attended over 700 births in community based and hospital settings.”Court records indicate that Ms. Rojas is a U.S. citizen but that Mr. Ley, who was also arrested, was a citizen of Cuba.Ms. Shearman said that Ms. Rojas had been an obstetrician in Peru before moving the United States. She had been shocked to hear the allegation that Ms. Rojas had performed illegal abortions.“They’re saying that she did abortions or something?” said Ms. Shearman, who described herself as conservative. “She never ever talked about anything like that, and she’s very Catholic. I just don’t believe the charges.”Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
