It was Gocha Ramirez, the prosecutor in Starr County, Texas, a remote area on the border with Mexico. Herrera should never have been charged, Ramirez told the lawyer, according to a source familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private interactions. The prosecutor repeated this feeling in a message he sent the next day to an acquaintance. “I’m very sorry,” he wrote in the message, which was reviewed by the Washington Post. “I can assure you that I never intended to hurt this young girl.” A Texas woman is charged with murder after an abortion Ramirez moved to drop all charges on Sunday. Neither did Herrera respond to requests for comment. Villarreal declined to comment several times. Abortion rights advocates in Texas and across the country arrested Herrera shortly after her arrest Thursday, worrying she could be linked to a new Texas law banning most abortions and, worse, pointing to an ominous one. a future in which women seeking to terminate their pregnancies are treated as criminals. However, interviews with many people in the South Texas community who have been following the situation closely, as well as statements by leaders of the Texas anti-abortion movement, suggest that this was not part of a broader anti-abortion strategy, but rather a hasty mistake by a newcomer. Democratic Prosecutor. However, Herrera’s arrest could spark a growing state-sponsored abortion campaign. The battle has intensified until the Supreme Court ruled this summer that it could be overturned or significantly weakened. Roe vs. Wade, the previous milestone that protects the right to abortion for almost 50 years. Following the prosecutor’s statement that it was a hospital that reported Herrera to law enforcement, her case sparked strong concerns from abortion rights activists, who worried that possible breaches of patients’ privacy could instill greater fear. to women seeking access to legal abortion. “There is already so much skepticism and fear about abortion,” said Texas-based Blair Cushing, an abortion provider in South Texas. Texas law explicitly excludes a woman from the charge of criminal homicide for terminating her pregnancy. While many of the details of Herrera’s case remain unclear, even ardent anti-abortion activists have condemned her arrest. Texas Right to Life, the organization that helped draft the abortion ban in Texas, said the indictment came as a surprise. “The Texas Heartbeat Act and other state life policies clearly prohibit prosecution of pregnant women,” said John Seago, the group’s law director, referring to Texas law that allows individuals to sue anyone who helps facilitate a abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. “The Right to Life in Texas is against public prosecutors who go beyond the limits of prudent and carefully designed Texas policies.” Texas Patient Shelter, Oklahoma Clinics Prepare for Abortion Ban Cushing said she sees patients daily buying pills in Mexico for medical abortion – a two-step procedure involving mifepristone and misoprostol – and then coming to her clinic for testing. After hearing that a woman in their area had been charged with murder for abortion, Cushing said she expected patients to try to hide the details of their condition – or not come to it at all. In a statement issued on Sunday, Ramirez acknowledged that the events surrounding the incident had clearly “hurt” Herrera and her family. “Ignoring this fact would be short-sighted,” he said. A hospital brought the case to the sheriff’s office, according to Ramirez. Rene “Orta” Fuentes, 61, who became sheriff in 2008 after nearly three decades in the department, did not respond to a request for comment. Ross Barrera, a community organizer and former chairman of Star Republic’s Republican Party, said abortion is rarely discussed in public forums in a strongly Democratic county. He described Ramirez as a “hardline Democrat” and said he was simply “wrong” in the Herrera case. “I think his office just failed to do its job,” he said. “I would put my hand on the Bible and say that this was not a political statement.” Ramirez widely supported the Democratic candidates. Supported the Democratic presidential ticket in 2020 on social media. He ran for Democratic nominee for governor Beto O’Rourke last year, Democratic nominee for governor Wendy Davis in 2014 and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama in 2008, according to state and federal campaign records. Starr County, in the heart of the vast Spanish-speaking Rio Grande Valley of Texas, is a predominantly rural area with small towns. Residents of Rio Grande County, the county headquarters, buy their groceries at a single HEB supermarket. People either gather in the church or in their backyards for carne asada, according to the person who knows the situation concerning Herrera. Ever since a Panda Express recently opened, he added, this person has been “all the rage.” While people in Starr County tend to vote for Democrats up and down, many are socially conservative, especially when it comes to abortion. The area is full of ardent Catholics who are still raising eyebrows to discuss who got pregnant “out of wedlock,” said the person who knows the situation. Few details are publicly known about Herrera, the 26-year-old woman at the center of an incident that has caught the country’s attention. He was released by police following a series of abortion efforts by women of color led by women of color. Her husband, Ismail Herrera, filed for divorce on April 7, the same day she was arrested, according to court documents. They married in 2015, when she was 19, and stopped living together on or about January 1, according to records. The separation occurred less than a week before the “self-induced abortion” described in her indictment. The couple has two sons, according to records. The petitioner, Judith Solis, did not respond to requests for comment. Ismael Herrera was also not accessible from The Post. He spoke briefly in Spanish to a local television reporter on Monday, saying: “Listen now, I have no words. … He was a son. A boy.” Ramirez, the 68-year-old prosecutor, won the Democratic primary in 2020 and did not face a Republican challenger in the general election. Much of his campaign focused on defending children. On April 1, a week before Herrera’s arrest, his office posted a message on Facebook declaring April “Child Abuse Awareness and Prevention Month” in the 229th District Court. Within the Starr County legal community, Ramirez’s decision to prosecute is widely regarded as “gross negligence,” said a community lawyer who, like others interviewed about the story, spoke on condition of anonymity. to discuss honestly sensitive issues. When Abner Burnett, one of Starr County’s public defenders, first heard about the arrest, he was puzzled about the bill the prosecution could use, as the Texas Penal Code explicitly acquits a pregnant woman of this kind. the charges of murder. “At first I thought maybe someone had handed over a new statute from me and they were trying it out,” Burnett said. National abortion rights attorneys rushed to offer financial and legal support to Herrera over the weekend, according to the source. But Herrera and her family decided to keep Villarreal, a 54-year-old lawyer known for quoting the Bible. The website of his law firm describes it as “a Christian organization that believes in the teachings of the Lord and in the impact that only Jesus Christ can have on individuals. The website adds: “With this in mind, our intention is to use the wisdom and experience the Lord has provided to serve our customers with the utmost respect and care. It is an honor to serve our customers, because it is a service to God “. In a small legal community where most of the lawyers know each other, court records show 19 federal cases in which Villarreal and Ramirez represented co-accused. Villarreal has publicly stated its support for Ramirez in two Facebook posts ahead of his March 2020 election. “They are friends,” said one person close to the situation. “They go far back.” Many abortion rights advocates across the country have filed lawsuits against Ramirez and others responsible for Herrera’s arrest. Local practitioners in Starr County have also signaled their support for legal action. If Burnett, the public defender, were in Villarreal’s place, he said, he would sue the county for what he did to Herrera “in a minute”. “It’s wrong, not only was she arrested and charged with a crime that did not exist, but she was also exposed to a kind of public light that she did not deserve,” Burnett said. “They should have been much more careful before doing this.” As soon as Cushing, the abortion provider, heard the news about Herrera, he said he immediately thought of the women he sees in the Rio Grande Valley. When her patients go to Mexico for abortion pills, they are often given the wrong instructions on how to take them, Cushing said. Sometimes the wrong shape fails to terminate the pregnancy, he said, and sometimes it can endanger the patient’s health. Cushing has worked hard to gain the trust of these patients, he said. Now, he added, it will have to work even harder.
