Police: Officer in anti-abortion billboard ‘against his wishes’

Spokesman says photo was used after department declined to give permission

The face, uniform and badge of an officer respected for protecting local residents is being used as part of an anti-abortion billboard without his permission, his superiors say. Albuquerque Police Officer Ryan Holets appears on a billboard along an interstate that runs through the city, along with the words “My favorite right is life.”

The images include two of him holding his daughters, including one daughter he adopted from a couple he found shooting heroin while on patrol in 2017.

Holets also helped raise money to find housing for the girl’s biological parents while they completed a drug rehabilitation program in 2018. The heroin-using woman was pregnant at the time Holets found her, and she agreed to give up the girl for adoption after the birth.

Anti-abortion activists, including the grandmother of his other daughter, Ethel Maharg, have held up Holets’ adoption of the girl as an alternative to abortion.

Maharg is the executive director of Right to Life New Mexico, the anti-abortion group that used his image on the billboard.

The Albuquerque Police Department says Holets declined the group permission to use the image of him in uniform because it would violate policy.

“The group used the images anyway, without permission and contrary to the wishes of a police officer who has distinguished himself for his integrity,” police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said.

“That’s not true,” Maharg told local TV station KRQE in an edited interview. “Officer Holets never told me that I couldn’t.”