Jerry Rodriguez appeared to be a deeply aggrieved man—the victim of a scheme orchestrated by his girlfriend’s domineering ex-partner to “murder” not one, but two, of his “unborn children.” In a lawsuit filed in Galveston, Texas, last summer on behalf of “all current and future fathers… in the United States,” Rodriguez was portrayed as a devoted boyfriend who accompanied his girlfriend to ultrasound appointments and, eventually, pleaded with her not to go through with abortions that her ex was trying to force her to have.

Weirdly, the villain in this anguished narrative story wasn’t the girlfriend’s estranged husband, but a California-based provider named Dr. Rémy Coeytaux whom Rodriquez accused of “wrongful death” for allegedly supplying the abortion pills used to terminate her pregnancies.

Demanding justice on Rodriguez’s behalf was anti-abortion legal mastermind Jonathan F. Mitchell, who was seeking an injunction to stop Coeytaux—and all other medical providers—from sending pills to Texas, where abortion is banned. This winter, Mitchell amended the lawsuit to incorporate a new Texas law, House Bill 7, that allows private “bounty hunters” to sue abortion-pill providers for at least $100,000 per violation.

Sympathetic-sounding plaintiffs like Rodriguez are an essential part of Mitchell’s strategy. But a few months after the case was filed, Rodriguez’s story has fallen apart, highlighting just how ineffective Mitchell and his allies have been—so far—in using such lawsuits to push their sweeping anti-abortion agenda.

According to an investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle, at the same time that Mitchell was promoting his client as a symbol of aggrieved fathers-to-be, the Galveston man was evading a felony arrest warrant for allegedly beating up the girlfriend whose abortions he claimed to mourn. In October 2024—a few months before filing his lawsuit—Rodriguez had a violent altercation with his girlfriend at a motel. He allegedly grabbed the woman’s neck as if he was trying to “crush” it, the article detailed, to the point where she “believed she was going to die.” She told police the attack was the eighth time in five months that Rodriguez assaulted her. He then proceeded to slam her to the floor, climb on top of her, and punch and slap her until she finally broke free and escaped, the Chronicle said.