Texas man faces criminal charges for adding abortion pills to wife's drink
Pills | For representative use
A Texas man who allegedly slipped an abortion pill into his wife's drink without her knowledge faces criminal charges. The 38-year-old attorney from Houston named Mason Herring was earlier indicted by a grand jury on two felony counts, including assaulting a pregnant person. Herring faces another charge, that of “assault-forced induced to have an abortion”, according to court records.
The abortion law in Texas is one of the most restrictive and allows for termination of pregnancy only if the person's life is in danger and makes no exceptions for rape or incest. According to the law, performing an abortion is a felony and also gives civilians the ability to sue any person who helps a person get an abortion.
His wife has alleged that Herring offered her glasses of water in March of which she took one but it looked cloudy. Herring told her that it could be because of the dirty pipes. After about half an hour, she started cramping and bleeding heavily and was taken to the emergency room. She believes her symptoms were due to an abortion-inducing pill.
He offered her more drinks after returning from the hospital and she noticed three had “an unknown substance” in them, and the fourth was a bottle of orange juice with the seal broken.
An affidavit by the Houston police department says that the couple had been married 11 years and in February Herring had expressed the desire to separate from his wife. They have two children together and Herring had later moved out. He had agreed to a couples' counselling session and in March his wife told him about the pregnancy, which he apparently didn't take well.
In April, his wife invited two people to potentially see if her husband was behaving suspiciously. The two people and his wife noticed that Herring tried to give her a drink which had “an unknown substance” inside. Next week she saw him put something in her drink and found open packs of Cyrux, which contains misoprostol, an ingredient known to induce abortions, in the trash.
Herring is scheduled to appear in court again on December 2 and is currently out on $30,000 bond.
(With inputs from agencies)
