Last March, AG Ken Paxton busted an illegal abortion operation in Houston wide open, arresting Maria Margarita Rojas and two others. Rojas was a midwife who posed as a gynecologist and went by the name “Dr. Maria.” At the time of the arrest, she was the apparent owner of three clinics.
According to the office of the Texas AG, a grand jury indicted Rojas on 15 felony counts, including illegal performance of an abortion and 12 counts of practicing medicine without a license. She was the first to be charged under the Texas Human Life Protection Act of 2021, a law that made taking the life of almost any preborn child through the violent act of abortion a felony.
Now, after several more months of investigation, eight additional arrests have been made – all indicted for practicing medicine without a license under Rojas.
These individuals include: Yaimara Hernandez Alvarez, Alina Valeron Leon, Dalia Coromoto Yanez, Yhonder Lebrun Acosta, Liunet Grandales Estrada, Gerardo Otero Aguero, Sabiel Bosch Gongora, and Jose Manuel Cendan Ley.
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Jose Manuel Cendan Ley was also arrested back in March with Rojas, but he was released on bail. It seems he has been arrested a second time.
AG Paxton stated, “This cabal of abortion-loving radicals has been running illegal clinics staffed with unlicensed individuals who endangered the very people they pretended to help. Beyond being illegal, it is evil.”
There are now ten arrests, total, surrounding this illegal abortion operation – likely one of the largest abortion rings to be uncovered to date. It is even more likely that this is not the only one. How many more abortion-free states are being targeted by opportunistic criminals ready to prey on pregnant mothers?
Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue states, “When a group of people have already decided they have the authority to end the life of an innocent child, what other law would they hesitate to break? Operation Rescue has spent years documenting criminal activity just like this in the abortion industry. It’s why we call it the ‘abortion cartel’ – criminal minds with criminal intent run this industry every day. The ‘reign of Rojas’ may be at an end, but I have no doubt there are more abortion criminals out there ready to exploit women, ignore state laws, and kill babies. We’ve especially seen this willingness to flout the law with virtual abortion pill suppliers. Or, as we call it, the Virtual Back-Alley.”
Margaret Carpenter, a New York abortionist, is facing felony charges in Louisiana after illegally providing abortion pills to a minor. The young girl ended up in the emergency room after ingesting the pills. In Texas, Carpenter landed another woman in the emergency room, as well, flouting state laws and illegally providing abortion pills. She currently faces a civil suit in the state of Texas.
A California abortionist identified as Remy Coeytaux also faces charges in Louisiana, as well as a federal lawsuit in Texas.
A woman in Louisiana alleges that Coeytaux provided abortion pills to her boyfriend, who used her email address to obtain the pills and then pressured her to take them in 2023. A warrant for Coeytaux’s arrest has been issued. In Texas, Coeytaux reportedly shipped abortion pills to a woman at the request of her estranged husband. Her boyfriend filed the current federal lawsuit.
Both of these abortionists live in states with shield laws – that is, states whose legislatures or officials have already announced they will not cooperate with any out-of-state investigations involving their abortionists, even when the abortionist harms a patient.
“Unlike AG Paxton in Texas, state officials in California and New York do not care one whit about justice when a woman is killed or injured by abortion,” says Newman, “nor do they have any respect for another state’s legal right to protect the preborn through laws created by elected legislators. They only care about their sacred abortionists, America’s privileged class of doctor that cannot be bothered with things like accountability or consequences for their actions. Thank God AG Paxton is seeking to hold abortion criminals accountable. Thank God there are still officials in this nation willing to stand against the absolute tyranny of abortion radicals.”
LifeNews Note: This article was originally published by Operation Rescue, a leading pro-life, Christian activist organization dedicated to exposing abortion abuses, demanding enforcement, saving innocent lives, and building an abortion-free America. The author, Sarah Neely, is Chief Operating Officer for Operation Rescue.
