In a striking story out of Texas that starkly juxtaposes with the state’s stringent abortion laws, personal injury attorney Mason Herring received a relatively light sentence for his crimes. Herring was revealed to have been repeatedly slipping an abortion drug into his pregnant wife’s beverage without her knowledge. In a case dating back to 2022, Herring’s actions ultimately led to his daughter being born prematurely, weighing just over three pounds and needing months on a feeding tube. Herring ultimately took a plea deal, admitting to his crimes and pleading guilty to injury to a child and assault of a pregnant person.
Harris County District Court Judge Andrea Ball sentenced Herring to a term of 180 days in jail, followed by 10 years of probation. This verdict left many questioning the justice of such a light sentence for such severe actions, including Herring’s estranged wife who pointedly noted that Herring’s time in jail amounted to less than their child spent on the feeding tube.
This case arose in Texas, a state well-known for authoring a de facto abortion ban, even ahead of the Supreme Court’s deliberation on Roe v. Wade. In an attempt to circumvent constitutional assessment, the state has remained in the vanguard of restricting women’s bodily autonomy, actions that have frequently led to tragic and cruel outcomes.
In spite of a policy said to be rooted in the aim of “saving unborn children,” the lenient penalty for Herring, who caused direct harm to his unborn child and pregnant wife, seems diametrically opposed to this declared ethos. The concordance of this severe crime with such a light sentence points to the larger oversights and gaps in a system claiming to advocate for the unborn but failing to proportionately penalize acts of violence against them.