Texas woman charged with murder after having abortion sues county, DA

A woman who spent three days in a Texas jail in 2022 after a murder charge was wrongly brought against her for what officials described as a “self-induced abortion” is suing the county and its top prosecutors.

Lizelle Gonzalez, then 26, had gone to a hospital in early 2022 after taking an abortion pill while 19 weeks pregnant. The next day, when no fetal heartbeat was detected, she underwent a Caesarean section to deliver, according to a new lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

Texas law at the time banned abortions after six weeks and allowed anyone to sue a person for performing or helping someone get the procedure. But state law exempts women from facing criminal charges for aborting pregnancies.

Still, in a move that drove intense national attention to the remote Starr County, District Attorney Gocha Ramirez (D) in April 2022 charged Gonzalez with murder. Ramirez decided to drop the charge three days later and has since faced disciplinary action. But the case “forever changed” Gonzalez’s life, her court filing states, noting that her mug shot surfaced online within hours of her arrest.

The lawsuit accuses Starr County, Ramirez and Alexandria Barrera, an assistant district attorney, of providing “false information and recklessly misrepresented facts” to pursue the murder charge.

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