(LifeSiteNews) – A Texas man has been arrested in connection with his 17-year-old daughter’s abandonment of a dead infant in a Walmart restroom and has since been charged with sexually assaulting a child.
USA Today reported that employees of the Walmart on East General Cavazos Boulevard called 911 the morning of July 14 after discovering a baby in a restroom trash bag. They attempted to save the child, which was transported to Christus Spohn Hospital-Kleberg but ultimately pronounced dead. No cause of death has yet been released.
Security video showed a girl entering the store and spending approximately 40 minutes in the restroom, then leaving a half-hour before the child was discovered. The girl was apprehended and hospitalized, though there was no word on whether she would face charges.
The man was identified as Jerry Lee Martinez and charged with abandoning or endangering a child with criminal negligence, tampering with physical evidence with intent to impair, and witness tampering.
Local NBC affiliate KRIS-6 has since reported that Martinez was later charged with sexual assault of a child as well, although whether or not his daughter was his alleged victim is not yet known. Police say no further details will be shared during an ongoing investigation other than that the girl is in a secure location.
“If Jerry Martinez had driven just 150 yards further, his grandchild might still be alive today. His daughter could have safely and legally placed her baby into the arms of hospital staff — giving the child a chance at life and adoption, instead of leaving them to die alone in a restroom trash can,” Ashlynn Lemos of Texas Right to Life wrote based on the initial report, noting that the “Texas Baby Moses Law allows parents to safely and legally surrender their newborn — 60 days old or younger — at any hospital, fire station, or police station that’s staffed 24/7. No questions asked.”
However, the subsequent sexual assault charge sheds light on a possible motive for not giving the baby to a safe haven: disposing of a child that could possibly be traced back to another heinous crime.
Despite the abortion lobby’s framing of abortion as a matter of “choice,” it has long turned a blind eye to abortion coercion.
Live Action’s “Aiding Abusers” series draws on news reports, eyewitness testimony, and undercover video to expose Planned Parenthood employees’ willingness to offer abortions to girls as young as 12 without reporting signs of statutory or forcible rape to law enforcement. This enables the men who brought the girls in for appointments to bring them home and continue abusing them.
In 2023, the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute released a study that interviewed 1,000 American women and found that 61 percent of women who undergo abortions do so due to pressure from “male partners, family members, other persons, financial concerns, and other circumstances.”
“Forcing a woman to have an abortion, including a minor, is illegal in all 50 states of the United States of America,” according to the Justice Foundation’s Center Against Forced Abortions, which offers a variety of information resources to help those who are being pressured into killing their babies.
