The ‘Highly Unusual’ Case Of The Midwife Arrested For Violating Texas’ Abortion Law

Maria Rojas was arrested nearly three months ago and still hasn’t been indicted for any crime — putting her in excruciating limbo by the state.

Jun 4, 2025, 04:35 PM EDT

Maria Rojas, a Houston-area midwife, was arrested in March for allegedly violating Texas’ near-total abortion ban. She was held for 10 days in the same jail where Sandra Bland died after a routine traffic stop in 2015. Rojas was able to post the exorbitant $1.4 million bail with help, but her phone was seized and her license was stripped — and with it her ability to make an income. She was court-ordered to wear a tracking device.

“In Texas, life is sacred. I will always do everything in my power to protect the unborn,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a leading anti-abortion advocate who recently announced his bid for a U.S. Senate seat, proudly boasted about the arrest.

But three months later, Rojas has not been formally charged with a crime — putting her in an excruciating limbo where she’s unable to make money, but forced to pay for a costly legal defense with little public evidence against her.

It’s standard practice for a criminal complaint to be filed shortly after someone is arrested. But in an unusual move, Rojas was held on an arrest warrant. Without a formal indictment or any criminal discovery from the state, Rojas can’t begin preparing her defense.

“Mrs. Rojas remains unindicted for any crime. Meanwhile, she remains under exceedingly restrictive bond conditions, and she is prohibited from doing the lawful work as a midwife she was doing before these specious allegations against her were made,” Nicole Hochglaube, Rojas’ defense attorney, told HuffPost.

It’s “really unusual” to be arrested but not indicted, C. Melissa Owen, first vice president at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told HuffPost.

“It was highly unusual 10 days after she had been arrested, and it is exceptionally unusual now,” said Owen, who is also the co-chair of the NACDL’s task force on policing and overcriminalization of pregnancy.

The Texas Office of the Attorney General did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment. Attorneys representing Paxton’s office also did not respond to a request for comment.

This has not only been a difficult time for Rojas and her family, but also the primarily Spanish-speaking, low-income community Rojas once served, Hochglaube said. The midwife owned and operated several health clinics in the Houston area, all of which have been temporarily closed by a court order in a civil case brought by Paxton’s office.

“We look forward to clearing her of these allegations but remain in a damaging holding pattern waiting for any specifics about these claims from the State of Texas,” Hochglaube said.

Without an indictment, Rojas is left in a sort of no man’s land where due process has been put on hold. “There is no possibility of due process for her in this current state,” Owen said. “Rights only become meaningful through due process. You can’t do anything about an arrest unless you can challenge it.”

“There is no possibility of due process for her in this current state.” – C. Melissa Owen, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers

The 30-page arrest affidavit filed by Paxton’s office is currently the only evidence from the state outlining Rojas’ alleged crimes. The investigation into Rojas’ clinics began with an anonymous complaint to Texas Health and Human Services in January. The attorney general’s office investigated and arrested Rojas and another worker on charges of practicing medicine without a license. Weeks later, they were arrested again on charges of performing an illegal abortion.

State investigators surveilled the clinics for a little over a month earlier this year after the anonymous complaint alleged that two women received illegal abortions from Rojas in September 2023 and January 2025. One of the two women later confirmed to investigators that she received an abortion from Rojas, according to the arrest warrant. A third woman told investigators that Rojas presented herself as a gynecologist and may have provided a medication abortion to the woman after Rojas said she would not be able to carry the pregnancy to term.

The arrest affidavit stated that investigators seized a bottle of misoprostol and $2,900 in cash from Rojas’ car. The main investigator wrote that he knew, “based on training and experience, that misoprostol is an abortifacient commonly used to induce medical abortions.”

Last month, Rojas was able to tell her side of the story in an appeal brief in the civil suit. Her attorneys painted a very different picture, accusing Paxton’s office of conjecture and a politically motivated investigation that proves nothing.

“The Attorney General boasts that he has caught a ‘Houston-Area Abortionist’ and has shut down ‘Clinics Providing Illegal Abortions.’ But there’s a snag: it isn’t true,” Rojas’ attorneys wrote in the brief. “In the Attorney General Office’s rush to find and prosecute someone for violating the State’s total abortion ban, it conducted a shoddy investigation and leapt to wild conclusions.”

Witness statements in the arrest warrant “do not show that an abortion was knowingly provided or attempted,” Rojas’ attorneys wrote in the civil appeal. They argue that investigators’ main witness — the third woman who alleges Rojas may have provided a medication abortion — was given one misoprostol tablet, which is one-fourth of the dose needed for a full medication abortion. Rojas likely believed the woman was experiencing a miscarriage and gave her misoprostol, the standard protocol for miscarriage care.

The main investigator, who is a Medicaid fraud investigator, seized a small number of misoprostol pills from Rojas’ car, but didn’t note that misoprostol is commonly used for other medical issues, most notably during labor and delivery of a baby. The affidavit states several times that Rojas had $2,900 in cash and the clinics accepted cash payment. The investigator noted that he knows “cash-based and digital peer-to-peer transactions are frequently used in unlicensed medical operations to avoid financial scrutiny and regulatory oversight,” but he did not note that people who are uninsured or have immigration concerns are more likely to use cash.

Marc Hearron, the lead lawyer on Rojas’ civil case and an attorney with the Center for Reproductive Rights, said he’s stunned by what’s happening to Rojas.

“If the state can do this shoddy investigation, get an arrest warrant and throw you in jail, just by saying the word ‘abortion,’ without even actually having the evidence to back it up — any health care provider is at risk in the state of Texas,” he told HuffPost.

Owen, from NACDL, speculated that there are likely two main reasons for the state’s delay in indicting Rojas. The first is that the evidence Paxton’s office has gathered wouldn’t survive the test of probable cause. The second is that they do have probable cause but there is something suspect about the evidence they’ve gathered or how they obtained it.

The lack of formal criminal charges isn’t the only exceptional thing about this case. It’s also unusual that Paxton’s office is directly responsible for investigating Rojas. The attorney general’s office in Texas doesn’t have the power to prosecute someone on criminal charges; the office needs to be invited by a local district attorney. Rojas was arrested in Waller County, where Sean Whittmore, the local district attorney, is a former employee of Paxton’s.

Rafa Kidvai, an attorney with the Repro Legal Defense Fund, pointed to Paxton’s involvement in the case, a general lack of evidence against Rojas and the bail amount as reasons that they believe this is a political prosecution.

Abortion criminalization cases often do set higher bail amounts, said Kidvai, because abortion is a politically charged issue. For example, women who miscarry into a toilet and flush fetal remains have been charged with abuse of a corpse. But even within that context, Rojas’ bail amount for allegedly performing an illegal abortion, a second-degree felony in Texas, was “inordinately high,” Kidvai said.

The average bail amount for a second-degree felony in Waller County is around $36,000, according to 2024 public records. Rojas’ bail was set at $1.4 million.

“This sort of cruelty by procedure that happens is exactly what we need to be talking about,” Kidvai said. “If you lose all your financial support or your income, how do you fight the case? Attorneys cost money, going to court costs money, childcare costs money, therapy costs money. Criminal cases are inordinately expensive for people to take on themselves.”

Kidvai has worked on many pregnancy and abortion criminalization cases including several in Texas. When someone is accused of these types of crimes, often because of pregnancy loss, their community turns on them. They lose employment, they’re at risk of losing custody of their children, and sometimes there are immigration consequences.

Rojas spent 10 days in jail before she paid her $1.4 million bail. She was able to pay the bond with the help of bail funds, organizations that provide financial assistance so people can be released from jail before trial.

The $1.4 million bail amount signals “that they want to punish somebody and never actually give this person the opportunity to defend themselves,” Owen said.

“Absent that bail fund, she would be serving a sentence and having no chance to test whether or not there is even a crime here.”

Source- The ‘Highly Unusual’ Case Of The Midwife Arrested For Violating Texas’ Abortion Law