Bar disciplines DA for murder charge over woman’s self-induced abortion
A Texas prosecutor has been disciplined for allowing a murder charge to be filed against a woman who self-induced an abortion in 2022.
Starr County District Attorney Gocha Ramirez reached a settlement with the State Bar of Texas following an investigation. Ramirez agreed to pay a $1,250 fine, and his license will be held in a probated suspension for one year, ending on March 31, 2025.
The State Bar of Texas confirmed the settlement and that it involved the case of a 26-year-old Texas woman who was arrested nearly two years ago and charged with murder in “the death of an individual by self-induced abortion.”
Ramirez could not be immediately reached for comment. He told the Associated Press last week that he “made a mistake in that case,” and had agreed to the settlement because it allows his office’s operations to continue, interruption-free. If the district attorney complies with the settlement’s terms, he will be allowed to continue practicing law.
In 2022, the woman was arrested and booked into the Starr County Detention Center on bail of $500,000. She spent two nights there before Ramirez announced that charges against her would be dropped.
The case sparked national outrage — Texas law exempts a pregnant person from being charged with murder or any homicide charge for an abortion. Abortion rights activists throughout the state’s border region banded together to fight the charges, including the Frontera Fund, National
Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice and ACLU of Texas.
The State Bar of Texas’ investigation found that prosecutors working under Ramirez pursued criminal homicide charges for acts that were “clearly not criminal.” The investigation also revealed that Ramirez allowed an assistant to take the case to a grand jury — and that the district attorney “knowingly made a false statement” when he later told State Bar officials that he was not briefed on the facts of the case before it was presented.
The arrest was just months before the Supreme Court ended the national right to abortion in a landmark decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. At the time, Texas law banned abortion once cardiac activity could be detected — which often occurs before a woman is even aware of her pregnancy.
Following the Supreme Court decision, Texas joined many other states in enforcing a near-total ban on abortion. The state’s laws encourage the pursuit of lawsuits against health care providers and others who help women seeking abortions, but protect those women from criminal charges.
The State Bar of Texas did not release any details of the self-induced abortion. In the U.S., as abortion restrictions in states, including Texas, tighten, medication abortion now accounts for more than half of all abortions nationwide.