Texas Republican state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione helped write one of the country’s strictest abortion laws.
Now he’s been forced into a stunning admission after a woman revealed that she had carried on a 17-year relationship with Capriglione and accused him of “secretly paying for multiple abortions.”
“Years ago, I selfishly had an affair,” the Southlake Republican said in a statement after the allegations became public. “I’m not proud of this.”
And that’s where this story gets politically explosive.
Capriglione was the House author of Texas’ 2021 Human Life Protection Act, the so-called trigger ban that took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The law prohibits abortion except under specified circumstances and provides both civil and criminal penalties.
The woman making the allegations is Alex Grace, a former exotic dancer who says she met Capriglione in 2004, when she was 18, according to International Business Times.
In a 25-minute interview published by the conservative news outlet Current Revolt in July 2025, Grace alleged that the relationship continued for 17 years.
She said Capriglione paid her for “meetups” and claimed he “funded several abortions for his own personal gain.”
Grace did not provide details about the alleged abortions, saying viewers would have to take her word for it.
Capriglione’s response was immediate.
He acknowledged having an affair years ago but did not publicly confirm that Grace was the woman involved.
He also categorically rejected the abortion allegation.
“I have never, nor would I ever, pay for an abortion,” Capriglione said. He called the remaining allegations “categorically false and easily disproven.”
Grace described a relationship that allegedly began before Capriglione entered politics and continued for years after he became a public figure. She said they met at his office and hotels and that he sometimes gave her cash or other gifts.
She also described one alleged cash payment that was supposedly left beneath a rubber mat near a dumpster behind a Chuck E. Cheese.
Capriglione disputed other elements of Grace’s account, including her claim that he visited Amsterdam.
According to Grace, the relationship finally ended around 2019 or 2020 after she confronted him about his political positions. She said Capriglione subsequently cut off communication.
Capriglione, meanwhile, suggested the allegations were politically motivated.
He pointed to his work investigating what he described as misconduct involving powerful interests in Texas and said he intended to pursue legal remedies over what he characterized as defamatory claims.
The timing made the story even more politically combustible.
Capriglione announced that he would not seek reelection just three days before Grace’s allegations were published.
Capriglione’s political record makes the abortion allegation particularly damaging.
He was the House author of HB 1280, the Human Life Protection Act. The Texas Legislative Reference Library lists Capriglione as the bill’s author, while Texas Alliance for Life identifies him as the House author of the legislation that became Texas’ post-Roe trigger ban.
The law was designed to take effect if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey After the Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs, the law took effect.
It also made helping someone obtain a prohibited abortion potentially subject to civil penalties, while the law’s criminal provisions include severe penalties for performing prohibited abortions.
That’s why Grace’s allegation carries such an obvious political contradiction.
A Republican lawmaker who helped author Texas’ abortion ban is being accused by a woman who says she was intimately involved with him for years of privately funding abortions.
