SE Repro Justice and Advocacy Spoke About This Case at the One Year Mark with Boots on the Ground Advocate, Avow Texas
Avow Texas aims to build a better Texas, one where every person is trusted, thriving, and free to pursue the life they want. Avow is on the ground and at the frontlines, fighting for abortion access, confronting systemic oppression, and building pro-abortion agendas shaped by and for Texans.
When I reached out to have raven, Avow’s Executive Director, join my Southern Voices series, the team couldn’t have been more supportive of spending time on Substack Live to talk about their work, with a deliberate focus on Houston midwife Maria Rojas’s case. Avow was intentional about the date, choosing to go live on the one year mark of the injustice done to Rojas and the community she served.
Please listen to what raven had to say about the case, and about the real world impact this criminalization had on their community, along with my write-up of Maria Rojas’s case below.
raven was direct about what this case represents at a deeper level. The state is not targeting a hospital system or an organization with teams of lobbyists and legal counsel. It is targeting a community. It is targeting the place where care is provided, where information is trusted, and where people connect regardless of what they are facing.
“They’re targeting communities. Communities are the place where care is provided, where information is trusted, and where people can connect regardless of what they’re facing.”
raven named what is underneath that strategy: state violence used to silence already vulnerable communities, specifically communities of immigrants who are being monitored and surveilled in Texas right now. Criminalizing a community-based midwife, requiring a $1.4 million bond for a provider whose clinic served people with no other options, is not about public safety. It is, raven said, an act of violence.
Texas Court Reverses Injunction Against Midwife Maria Rojas - sending the case back to trial court
Yesterday, July 23, 2026 Center for Reproductive Rights, the organization legally representing the midwife, announced that A Texas appeals court has reversed the injunction that shut down the network of Houston-area clinics run by midwife Maria Rojas, ruling that the state failed to produce evidence supporting the claims against her. The case now returns to the trial court to proceed.
Rojas was the first person charged under Texas’s total abortion ban and faces up to life in prison if convicted. The three-judge panel found the state had not shown wrongdoing sufficient to justify the injunction imposed last year, which forced Rojas to give up the leases on all three of her clinics.
Jenna Hudson, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which represents Rojas in the civil case along with Arnold & Porter and Hearron PLLC, called the ruling a significant step but noted the damage may be irreversible. Reopening shuttered clinics can take years, if it happens at all. Rojas’s clinics served largely low-income, uninsured, and Spanish-speaking patients in the Houston area, including one location with a birthing center. Those patients have been left without access to their provider, their health records, or their test results.
Rojas spent 10 days in jail before an exorbitant $1.4 million bond was posted, and she remains on an ankle monitor with her midwifery license suspended. She’s separately facing criminal charges that carry a potential life sentence. Ten other people affiliated with the clinics were also arrested and charged, most with practicing medicine without a license.
CRC connects the case to the broader pattern of maternal health crisis in Texas under its abortion bans, pointing to the death of Tierra Walker, who died of preeclampsia after being repeatedly denied an abortion during a high-risk pregnancy. The organization frames the prosecution of providers like Rojas as part of an effort to intimidate health care workers, with consequences for patients who are denied care as a result.
Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office has said it intends to petition the Texas Supreme Court for review.
Immigrants Rights = Reproductive Rights
Criminalization like this falls hardest on Black and brown communities, and it's a reminder that abortion regulation in one state shapes access to care far beyond its borders. I'll keep following this case and sharing updates. I’ll continue to follow this case and give updates; in the meantime, please donate to Avow Texas, follow them here on substack, Facebook, and instagram, or attend one of their many community events.
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