(LifeSiteNews) – Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Wednesday the arrest of eight individuals practicing medicine without a license in connection to an illegal abortion operation in Houston.
The eight individuals were working for Maria Rojas, who was recently indicted on 15 counts for having “posed as a physician while operating clinics in Waller, Cypress, Spring, and Katy,” according to a press release. They are also accused of committing illegal abortions and operating without proper medical licenses. An unspecified number of the new suspects are foreign nationals as well.
“These facilities unlawfully employed unlicensed individuals who falsely presented themselves as licensed medical professionals to provide medical treatment,” the AG office previously detailed. “Rojas also performed illegal abortion procedures in her clinics in direct violation of the Texas Human Life Protection Act.”
“This cabal of abortion-loving radicals has been running illegal clinics staffed with unlicensed individuals who endangered the very people they pretended to help,” Paxton said. “Beyond being illegal, it is evil. These dens of fake doctors will not be allowed to operate in Texas. Those responsible will be held accountable. I will always protect innocent life and use every tool to enforce Texas’s pro-life laws.”
The vast majority of abortions are illegal in Texas, but the state is still dealing with the problem of out-of-state actors using pills to circumvent Texas law, facilitating abortions that take place completely in private. In May, the Texas Senate passed SB 2880, the Woman and Child Protection Act, that would make it broadly illegal to “manufacture, possess, or distribute an abortion-inducing drug in this state” as well as to help facilitate their acquisition. The Texas House did not take up the bill before the legislative session ended in June; it was later taken up in special session and signed in September (it has not yet taken effect).
Texas is one of 12 states that currently ban all or most abortions. But the unregulated, no-oversight distribution of abortion pills across state lines has become arguably the abortion lobby’s most effective tactic for preserving abortion “access” and are particularly problematic in pro-life states to which they can be sent and taken in complete privacy without any sign law enforcement can act on. Texas Right to Life puts the number of abortion pills mailed into Texas at more than 19,000 a year.
Paxton is also suing New York abortionist Margaret Daley Carpenter for having “unlawfully provided a Collin County resident with abortion-inducing drugs that ended the life of an unborn child and resulted in serious complications for the mother, who then required medical intervention.” In February 2025, Judge Bryan Gantt of North Texas ordered Carpenter to stop sending abortion pills into the state and to pay a $100,000 fine (Carpenter also faces charges out of Louisiana for the same). Carpenter is resisting, backed by New York Attorney General Letitia James.
