Rojas, 48, was arrested in March 2025 in the first criminal case stemming from Texas\u2019 2022 near-total abortion ban. At the time, reproductive justice advocates blasted<\/a> Paxton for targeting a woman of color who legally immigrated from Peru and was providing healthcare to an underserved population.<\/p>\n Hearron said after Thursday\u2019s hearing that he wasn\u2019t sure when the three-judge panel would rule on the civil case. The appeal, unrelated to Rojas\u2019 criminal charges, is asking that her clinics in Waller, Cypress and Spring be reopened.\u00a0<\/p>\n Felony charges against Rojas, which carry a penalty of up to 99 years in prison and a $100,000 fine, are baseless, Hearron said. Rojas has decades of experience as a healthcare provider and licensed midwife. One of her Houston-area clinics had a birthing center where she delivered babies.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHer life has been upended because of the state\u2019s unproven allegations,\u201d Hearron said. \u201cShe was held in jail for\u202f10 days\u202funtil\u202fan exorbitant $1.4 million bond was posted and is\u202fstill\u202fbeing forced to wear an ankle\u202fmonitor.\u202f Rojas lost her livelihood and was stripped of her midwifery license.\u201d<\/p>\n As attorney general, Paxton doesn\u2019t have independent prosecutorial authority and must be invited by a district attorney to bring criminal charges. Waller County DA Sean Whittmore, a former employee of the law enforcement division of the Attorney General\u2019s Office, joined forces with the AG to prosecute the case. The Center for Reproductive Rights has suggested that Paxton, who is currently running against John Cornyn and Wesley Hunt in the Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat, is crusading against healthcare providers to curry favor with anti-abortion advocates.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAttorney General Paxton has been escalating attacks<\/a> on health care providers across the country in an effort to end abortion access,\u201d Center for Reproductive Rights senior media adviser Tharanga Yakupitiyage said in a statement. \u201cThe criminalization of healthcare providers has tragic real-world consequences, as\u202fseen in the death of Tierra Walker, who <\/a>died of preeclampsia after being denied an abortion during her high-risk pregnancy.\u201d<\/p>\n Paxton has said he aims to protect the unborn and all Texans from \u201cdangerous clinics\u201d practicing medicine without a license. \u201cRojas and her network of illegal clinics operated with blatant disregard for the law, putting people\u2019s lives at risk,\u201d he said in a 2025 statement.<\/p>\n Hearron told the court on Thursday that the attorney general\u2019s office ran an \u201cincredibly shoddy investigation,\u201d failed to provide any evidence that abortions took place at Rojas\u2019 clinics and used inadmissible hearsay witness statements that weren\u2019t properly certified by a court.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe investigation was headed by a Medicaid fraud investigator who had no medical training, no experience with midwifery and no experience investigating abortions or practicing medicine,\u201d Hearron said. \u201cHe truly jumped to some incredibly wild conclusions. He saw someone exiting the clinic and getting helped into a car and just assumed that person may have had an abortion. When clinic staff gave him explanations that were consistent with lawful care, he didn\u2019t investigate that at all. He just assumed they must be lying. I could go on and on.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Jeffrey Stephens, a lawyer for the Texas attorney general\u2019s office, argued the merits of the injunction that closed the clinics, but did not address how the investigation was conducted.\u00a0<\/p>\n The judges at Thursday\u2019s hearing asked technical questions and pushed back on the claim that the context of the temporary injunction \u2014 the ruling that closed the three clinics \u2014 was unclear. \u201cThey weren\u2019t suing Ms. Rojas or her facilities for doing appendectomies or broken legs or skinned knees. They were suing for abortions,\u201d one judge said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another asserted that \u201cthere\u2019s not a lot there\u201d in the appellant\u2019s claim and suggested the matter should be heard by a trial court.<\/p>\n The Houston-area clinics have been closed for almost a year. Hearron told the Houston Press on Thursday that he\u2019s hopeful the court will rule soon in Rojas\u2019 favor. <\/p>\n \u201cThe state of Texas has no case, and today\u2019s hearing made that clear,\u201d Hearron said. \u201cAttorney General Ken Paxton ensnared Rojas because he is so desperate to prosecute someone \u2014 anyone \u2014under the Texas abortion ban. This is nothing but a publicity stunt. Paxton should be ashamed that he shut down these clinics while his state is facing a vast maternal health care crisis. Houston families deserve better.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Attorneys for Waller midwife Maria Rojas appeared in a Houston appeals court on Thursday, asking to reopen three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[4970,69836,226,56,58,57,1967,1932,69837,69680,50556],"class_list":["post-172813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-abortion","tag-center-for-reproductive-rights","tag-homepage","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-ken-paxton","tag-lawsuit","tag-marc-hearron","tag-maria-rojas","tag-midwife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Marc-Hearron.png\")
Marc Hearron, interim associate director of litigation at the Center for Reproductive Rights, argued Thursday that Maria Rojas\u2019 healthcare clinics should be reopened. Credit: Screenshot<\/p>\n