Houston midwife arrested for illegal abortion ring allowed to re-open facilities

The Fifteenth Court of Appeals reversed an injunction against Maria Rojas, a Houston-area midwife accused of orchestrating an illegal abortion ring, allowing her facilities to re-open while the case against her continues.

Key Takeaways:

• Maria Rojas was arrested in 2025 for committing illegal abortions, and was indicted with 15 felony charges.

• Eight other people were arrested, all of whom worked in her three facilities.

• Her attorneys asked for the facilities to be reopened while the case proceeds. The Fifteenth Court of Appeals agreed with her attorneys, and lifted the injunction against her, allowing her clinics to be reopened.

• Her case has been sent back to a trial court for further proceedings, as she has not been acquitted of any charges.

The Backstory:

Maria Rojas was arrested in March of 2025 after two women said she committed abortions on them in the state of Texas. A grand jury indicted her on three counts of committing an abortion, and 12 counts of practicing medicine without a license.

One woman, identified as E.G., said Rojas gave her abortion pills; another woman, N.M., said she committed an abortion on her, with the indictment in N.M.'s case specifying that the preborn child died.

She was accused of owning, operating, and committing abortions at multiple facilities, under the names Clinica Waller Latinoamericana in Waller, Clinica Latinoamericana Telge in Cypress, and Latinoamericana Medical Clinic in Spring. Rojas was allegedly charging between $800 and $1,300 for chemical abortions, and one patient said she had claimed to be a gynecologist, not a midwife. 

Eight people were later arrested as well, all charged with practicing medicine without a license. One, Jose Manuel Cendan Ley, was specifically charged with assisting in an illegal abortion.

After Rojas was arrested, Texas obtained a restraining order to shut down her three businesses. In February, her attorneys asked for them to be reopened as the case proceeds.

The Details:

The Fifteenth Court of Appeals ruled in Rojas' favor, lifting the injunction against her businesses. This allows them to reopen as the case against her continues.

According to The Texan, the ruling states:

Although the suit underlying this interlocutory appeal involves allegations that the appellants, a licensed midwife and a group of associated clinics, performed illegal abortions and practiced medicine without a license, this opinion does not decide whether those acts occurred.

Instead, it turns on the fact that the State of Texas did not provide the trial court with sufficient evidence on which the trial court could grant a temporary injunction.

We conclude that the trial court improperly admitted probable-cause affidavits from a related but separate criminal case and that the remaining evidence is insufficient to reasonably support the existence of a probable right of recovery. Consequently, because the trial court abused its discretion in granting temporary injunctive relief, we reverse the trial court’s temporary-injunction order and remand to the trial court for further proceedings.

"Without the probable-cause affidavits, the remaining evidence in the record does not reasonably support the State’s allegations that abortions have been performed at the Clinics and, consequently, that the State has a 'probable right to relief' on its claims that Rojas and the Clinics violated the HLPA and MPA," the judges said in the ruling. "The trial abused its discretion in granting the temporary injunctive relief."

Rojas has not been acquitted of any charges, and the case will return to the Waller County district court. She also faces a civil lawsuit, in addition to the criminal charges against her, and was represented by Jenna Hudson of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Hudson stated in a press release that “The state of Texas has no case. Maria Rojas has been an upstanding midwife who delivered babies and provided lawful care for underserved pregnant patients” asserting that "pregnant Texans are dying at alarming rates" and that "It will now be nearly impossible to re-open these clinics."

The Bottom Line:

While abortion activists are celebrating this ruling as a victory and framing it as an exoneration of Rojas, the case against her has not been resolved.