Murder Charges Dropped Against Texas Woman

 

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

It was beginning to look like it would be justice - Texas style . . . 

In what is quickly proving to be a rolling embarrassment to Texas GOP Governor Greg Abbott and most of male members of the state's legislature, the prosecutor in Starr County yesterday dropped the murder charge that he had earlier asked a Grand Jury to level against a twenty-six-year-old woman for performing a self-induced abortion to end a pregnancy.  In correcting his earlier error, the prosecutor pointed out, correctly, that there is currently no law on the books in Texas that prohibits a woman from inducing an abortion on herself.

Texas does have a civil law on the books that gives individuals the right to sue anyone who performs an abortion on a fetus old enough to exhibit a heartbeat (some say the that occurs around six weeks, though that is certainly a matter of contention).   Interested parties, who are defined as including almost anyone -  including friends and family of a rapist who caused a pregnancy - can sue abortion providers and those who aid or abet abortion providers, for up to $10,000 per abortion.

Lizelle Herrera, the victim in this case of police injustice, was not in jail at the time the news broke about the charges being dropped.  She was out on a half-a-million dollars bail that had been provided by her new legal representatives at the Frontera Foundation, a group which helps to provide abortions to women in need in the Rio Grande Valley.

More news about Ms. Herrera's particular case also became public yesterday.  In January of this year she had visited a local hospital over a medical matter related to her self-induced abortion.  Someone at the hospital then felt compelled to share Lizelle Herrera's private medical information with the local sheriff's office.  She was arrested this past Thursday, spent two nights in jail, and was released on exorbitant bail on Saturday.

Since Lizelle has already gone to the bother of securing legal representation, she might as well put the lawyers to good use.  Surely there is a case to be made against the hospital and it's employee(s) who grossly violated the young lady's HIPAA rights by releasing her private medical information to the Starr County Sheriff's Office, an organization that had no right to that information - and clearly no need to know it.

Then there is the matter of the wrongful arrest by the Starr County Sheriff's Office and the two day's (and nights) of illegal imprisonment that were forced upon the undoubtedly traumatized young woman - was well as the excessive bail that was required for her release from confinement.

I'm not a lawyer and I don't play one on television, but I am reasonably sure that several lawyers in Starr County, Texas, and one victim of a social lynching, are about to come into some serious coin.  The hospital, and the Sheriff's Office, and their insurers are all very likely to have their deep pockets picked by a phalanx of attorneys who are trained in recognizing the intricacy of rights which are embedded in the US Constitution.

. . . And that will be justice - American style!