Juana Idalia Sanchez was arrested on Sunday for assaulting a pregnant woman after she tried to force her daughter to take abortion pills in Loredo, Texas.
Sanchez’s 16-year-old daughter told her mother she was pregnant on March 30, the Loredo Morning Times reported. Her mother became angry and demanded that her daughter have an abortion, leading to a domestic altercation that police responded to on Sunday.
Sanchez’s daughter says her mother chased her around the house, causing the daughter to fall. Sanchez then pinned her daughter to the ground and forced her to take pills that would induce an abortion, the arrest affidavit states. Although Sanchez shoved the pills into her daughter’s mouth, she was able to spit them out, authorities said, per the Morning Times. (RELATED: Wyoming Becomes First State To Ban Abortion Pills)
Police responded to the incident and questioned Sanchez about how her daughter was injured, according to LifeNews. Sanchez told police she had pulled her daughter back into the house by her bra and eventually admitted to hitting and spanking her daughter as well, the Morning Times reported.
Sanchez was subsequently arrested for assault of a pregnant woman. It remains unclear how or when Sanchez obtained the abortion pills.
Elective abortions are illegal in Texas, but LifeNews reports that pro-choice organizations have found ways to ship abortion pills into the state after the FDA allowed abortion pills to be ordered by mail without an in-person doctor visit. (RELATED: There’s A New Battlefield In The Fight Over Abortion, And Conflict Is Heating Up)
Abortion pills have also been smuggled across the border from Mexico. In the summer of 2022, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a network of pro-abortion activists in Mexico began smuggling an average of 100 doses of mifepristone per day into Texas, according to CNN.
On March 10, Republican Texas state Rep. Cole Hefner introduced a bill that would hold individuals who manufacture, market, mail, distribute, transport, deliver, provision or possess mifepristone with the intent to facilitate abortions liable for terminated pregnancies or death resulting from the pill, Fox News reported.