Eight people affiliated with Houston-area health clinics accused of providing illegal abortions and operating without licenses were indicted, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Wednesday.
The announcement of more arrests in the case championed by Paxton comes a month after Maria Rojas, a Houston-area midwife who operated the clinics, was indicted on 15 felony charges stemming from allegations that she performed illegal abortions at the Waller County clinics. Rojas became the first person to be arrested under the state's near-total abortion ban.
Several counts outlined in the June indictment against Rojas accuse her of assisting nine different clinic employees to practice medicine without a license. The indictment also accuses Rojas of performing abortions on two different women in which at least one unborn child died during the medical procedures, according to court documents.
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Yaimara Hernandez Alvarez, Alina Valeron Leon, Dalia Coromoto Yanez, Yhonder Lebrun Acosta, Liunet Grandales Estrada, Gerardo Otero Aguero, Sabiel Bosch Gongora and Jose Manuel Cendan Ley were indicted for their alleged roles in the illegal abortion case, Paxton said.
Charging documents against the eight people facing new allegations in the case were not immediately available on Wednesday. Court filings showed medical malpractice charges were filed against some of those accused on Sept. 26 and Oct. 2.
Ley was first arrested in March and is facing allegations that he performed an abortion on a patient who did not have a life-threatening physical condition that placed her at risk of death or posed a risk of impairment, according to court documents. Ley allegedly was not a licensed physician at the time he performed the abortion.
On Monday, Alvarez’s bond conditions were uploaded to a folder of public court documents shared by the Waller County District Attorney's Office earlier this year. The conditions order Alvarez to stay away from the clinics in Cypress, Spring, Hempstead, Richmond and Bay City.
In a statement on Wednesday, Paxton called the group a “cabal of abortion-loving radicals.” Paxton’s investigation into the Houston-area clinics was first prompted earlier this year by a complaint from a person who said that two women, one three weeks pregnant and another eight weeks pregnant, had received abortions from the business.
“Beyond being illegal, it is evil,” Paxton said. “These dens of fake doctors will not be allowed to operate in Texas. Those responsible will be held accountable. I will always protect innocent life and use every tool to enforce Texas’s pro-life laws.”
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