After taking misopristol to end her pregnancy, Lizelle Gonzalez was charged with murder and held in jail for two nights before the charges were dismissed by a judge. Gonzales, who lives in Texas, is already suing the prosecutors who wanted to jail her, and now has expanded her lawsuit to target the hospital staff who snitched on her and the sheriffs who arrested her.
[Gonzalez] filed a civil rights complaint alleging that hospital staff provided her private information to prosecutors and the county sheriff who later charged her with murder, according to court documents. Under Texas' multiple abortion bans, it is not a crime for a woman to obtain or seek abortion care for herself; the abortion bans target physicians and anyone who aids a woman in obtaining or seeking an abortion. Gonzalez is alleging the prosecutors and the sheriff violated her Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights and is seeking over $1 million in damages. Two prosecutors — District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez and District Attorney Alexandria Lynn Barrera — as well as Starr County Sheriff Rene Fuentes and Starr County are all named in the lawsuit.
Despite all the efforts to craft abortion bans that don't target people who have abortions, here that kind of ban was conspiciously used to haul a woman in on a murder charge. It's almost as if that was the whole point, isn't it? I'd say "forget it, Jake, it's Texas," but forgetting things doesn't seem to help.
