Police in Starr County on the Texas-Mexico border have arrested and charged a woman with murder for allegedly performing what they called a “self-induced abortion.”

The Starr County Sheriff's Office arrested 26-year-old Lizelle Herrera on Thursday. TPR confirmed Friday night that Herrera was in the custody of the Starr County Sheriff’s Office with bond set at $500,000. By Saturday night, Herrera was released from custody.

The Starr County grand jury's indictment, dated March 30, stated that Herrera "did then and there intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an individual J.A.H. by a self-induced abortion."

“This is a developing story and we don’t yet know all the details surrounding this tragic event," said Rockie Gonzalez, founder and board chair of Frontera Fund. "What we do know is that criminalizing pregnant people’s choices or pregnancy outcomes, which the State of Texas has done, takes away people’s autonomy over their own bodies, and leaves them with no safe options when they choose not to become a parent."

Members of the Rio Grande Valley-based abortion assistance fund protested Saturday morning outside the Starr County Jail.

Melissa Arjona, who co-founded South Texans for Reproductive Justice, was also at the protest. She said the arrest is a consequence of Senate Bill 8, which criminalized abortion as early as five weeks and deputized private citizens to sue anyone who provides an abortion or “aids and abets” a procedure.

“I mean, they they criminalized pregnancy, basically, and abortion access," she said. "And so we knew something like this was bound to happen eventually.”

“We want people to know that this type of legislation impacts low-income people of color communities the most when state legislators put restrictions on our reproductive rights,” Gonzalez told TPR.

As legal challenges make their way through the courts, thousands of Texans have gone out of state to get abortions.

By Saturday evening, the specific details of Herrera's case — and the strength of the case against her — were still not clear.

"So there's a question of whether this actually qualifies as a murder?" said Jessica Brand, founder of the WREN Collective, a research firm that specializes in criminal justice issues. "I would say no. Everybody who's ever looked at a case like this, has has decided to say 'no' in the end. That's why these prosecutions haven't worked in states like Tennessee or Indiana, where they've been tried before."

Lynn Paltrow, founder and executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, said Texas law actually exempts her from a criminal homicide charge.

"When Texas law explicitly says that their murder statutes that do include the unborn child do not apply to the death of an unborn child if the conduct charged is 'conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child,'" she explained. "So this person who's been arrested has been arrested based on a law that does not permit exactly this kind of prosecution."