By Jerald Jimenez
03 Apr 2024, 10:35 AM EDT
A Hispanic woman from Texas who was arrested and charged with murder for allegedly performing a self-induced abortion in that state, whose charges were dismissed, filed a lawsuit against Starr County alleging that its authorities violated her civil rights.
At the time of Lizelle González’s arrest, her bail had been set at $500,000, and she spent three days behind bars following the dismissal of her charges by Starr County Prosecutor Gocha Ramírez.
The events occurred in January 2022, when González went to the emergency room and used misoprostol to supposedly “induce an abortion” while she was 19 weeks pregnant.
The doctors who treated her found that the fetus still had a heartbeat and that González was not experiencing contractions, so they kept her for observation overnight and discharged her with a follow-up appointment for four days later.
But the Hispanic woman returned to the emergency room 40 minutes later with abdominal pain and bleeding. On this occasion, doctors found no heartbeat in the fetus and proceeded to perform surgery. In April of that year, González was arrested after the hospital reported the incident to police, alleging violation of federal laws.
According to Gonzalez’s lawsuit, neither the Starr County Sheriff’s Office nor the Grande City Police Department pursued an investigation into the incident, but Assistant District Attorney Alexandria Lynn Barrera did her own investigation that was based on reports from police staff. hospital to present the accusation.
The lawsuit alleges that prosecutors Ramírez and Barrera knew that the law exempted González, but that they “proceeded to provide the grand jury with false and misleading information and omissions to secure a murder charge for the abortion.”
González’s complaint highlights that the arrest and murder charge “have forever changed the plaintiff’s life” due to the attention she received from the press. They claim Gonzalez’s arrest photo appeared online just hours after her arrest.
Texas had a near-total ban by the time of Gonzalez’s arrest, preventing abortion as soon as fetal activity was detected, which is around six weeks of gestation, a time when many women don’t know if they are pregnant. But the law did not justify the arrest and accusation against the Hispanic woman, since she was not the imprisoned person who should be arrested according to the law, but rather the doctors or abortion assistants.
With information from EFE