In Texas a woman who was charged with murder for self-managing an abortion, and spent two nights in jail before the charge was dropped, is now suing the prosecutors for $1 million.
The lawsuit filed by Lizelle Gonzalez in federal court Thursday comes a month after the state bar of Texas fined and disciplined the district attorney in rural Starr county over the case in 2022, when Gonzalez was charged with murder in “the death of an individual by self-induced abortion”.
Under the abortion restrictions in Texas and other states, women who seek abortions are exempt from criminal charges.
The lawsuit argues Gonzalez suffered harm from the arrest and subsequent media coverage. She is seeking $1m in damages.
…According to the lawsuit, Gonzalez was 19 weeks pregnant when she used misoprostol, one of two drugs used in medication abortions. Misoprostol is also used to treat stomach ulcers.
After taking the pills, Gonzalez received an obstetrical examination at a hospital emergency room and was discharged with abdominal pain. She returned with bleeding the next day and an exam found no fetal heartbeat. Doctors performed a caesarian section to deliver a stillborn baby.
The lawsuit argues that the hospital violated the patient’s privacy rights when they reported the abortion to the district attorney’s office, which then carried out its own investigation and produced a murder charge against Gonzalez.
Cecilia Garza, an attorney for Gonzalez, said prosecutors pursued an indictment despite knowing that a woman receiving an abortion is exempted from a murder charge by state law.
Prosecutors would had to have known that even in Texas, women could not be charged for receiving an abortion but they decided on charging her with murder anyway, in what seems like a purely vindictive effort to frighten other women who may seek to terminate their pregnancies using legal medications.
The only thing I’m surprised by here is the amount. Only a million?
The lawsuit argues that the hospital violated the patient’s privacy rights when they reported the abortion to the district attorney’s office…
In which case, it would seem almost obligatory to sue the hospital as well.
@3. Ooh, excellent point -- the hospital is surely on the hook here, unless there’s some bullshit loophole that allows them to call the cops when a law has been broken -- I wouldn’t put it past Texas.
More information here:
https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/illegal-and-unconstitutional-actions-woman-who-faced-murder-charges-over-self-induced-abortion-sues-texas-da-disciplined-for-bringing-the-legally-bogus-case/
Which also has a link to a Documentcloud PDF of the lawsuit. The text of the lawsuit has, as mentioned:
But:
I suspect that what happened here is the conflict between HIPAA privacy rules and mandatory reporting rules that kick in for certain situations. A quick search suggests that a report is mandated, for example, if there is a victim that belongs to certain vulnerable groups, which includes disabled, elderly — and children.
You or I might argue that a 19-week fetus is not a child, but a devoutly anti-abortion nurse or doctor might feel otherwise, and therefore feel justified in making the report. Especially given the situation of Texas’s hideously restrictive abortion laws, which were in place in 2022.
Ms. Gonzalez’s lawyers might have advised her that a lawsuit for HIPAA violation would probably not succeed.
That is likely to change in the near future.
The christofascists can’t wait to start arresting and imprisoning women for getting abortions.
Abortion is already a death penalty offense in Georgia.
and
Laws to make abortion a death penalty offense have been proposed in Texas, Idaho, and Missouri. In Alabama, the Alabama Supreme Court has defined zygotes as children so they could already prosecute abortion as first degree murder.
This is all about power.
Nothing shows that the christofascists have power like publicly executing a few thousand women on TV.
At the time of her abortion, Roe versus Wade hadn’t been overturned yet.
Which means that her abortion was still legal.
Which makes this prosecutor’s actions even more outrageous.