Lizelle Gonzalez, who was arrested and locked up for self-inducing an abortion in 2022, is now suing Texas’ Starr County District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez and Assistant District Attorney Alexandria Lynn Barrera for more than $1 million.
On March 28, the Texas woman, then Lizelle Herrera, filed the million-dollar federal lawsuit, alleging that Ramirez and Barrera “present[ed] false information and recklessly misrepresented facts in order to pursue murder charges against Plaintiff for acts clearly not criminal under the Texas Penal Code.”
Gonzalez is seeking $1 million for “deprivation of liberty, reputational harm, public humiliation, distress, pain, and suffering” she faced as a result of the prosecution in 2022, according to the documents. She claims that the “humiliation of a highly publicized indictment and arrest” has “permanently affected her standing in the community.”
The complaint further uncovers more details between Gonzalez’s January 2022 hospital visits and late March 2022.
Gonzalez was 19 weeks pregnant when she first went to the Starr County emergency room in January 2022, the lawsuit says. She took Cytotec, also known as misoprostol, to induce an abortion. However, a fetal heartbeat was detected, and the expectant mother was eventually discharged to go home.
On the following day, Gonzalez suffered with abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. The distressed woman was transported by ambulance to the Starr County Hospital, where she learned there was no fetal cardiac activity. As a result, she was diagnosed with an “incomplete spontaneous abortion.”
Gonzalez purportedly delivered a stillborn child by cesarean section.
The lawsuit also points out the employees of Starr County Memorial Hospital, claiming that they informed the Starr County District Attorney’s Office about Gonzalez’s hospital visit. According to the filing, Ramirez’s office took on the investigation and took his findings about the attempted abortion to a grand jury. The sheriff and local police were apparently not involved.
“We have no doubt that the Starr County District Attorney and his office were well-aware that Texas law exempts a woman who receives an abortion, by any means, from a murder charge and yet chose to pursue an unjust and unconstitutional indictment,” Gonzalez’s attorneys, Cecilia Garza and Veronica S. Martinez told CNN in a statement. “Such a flagrant violation of Ms. Gonzalez’s basic civil rights cannot be regarded as a mere ‘mistake.’”
In April 2022, Gonzalez was arrested in Starr County. She was released on $500,000 bail the following day. Days later, Ramirez announced he would file a motion to dismiss the charges against the embattled woman.
