Jaime Monzon
Girls march for abortion rights in San Antonio.
Initially revealed by Truthout. Subscribe to their publication right here.
Lubbock County, Texas, is now the fourth and largest county within the state to go an anti-abortion ordinance that will bar pregnant Texans from touring to entry an out-of-state abortion.
Lubbock now joins three different Texas counties — Goliad, Mitchell and Cochran — which have handed comparable anti-abortion journey ordinances.
Texas has some of the restrictive abortion bans within the nation, in keeping with the Middle for Reproductive Rights. Many Texans are pressured to journey out of state — and even out of nation — to entry an abortion; it’s estimated that Texans searching for an abortion need to journey a median of 240 miles every technique to entry care.
Abortion journey bans are enforced by personal civil lawsuits filed in opposition to individuals who “knowingly transport any particular person for the aim of offering or acquiring an elective abortion, no matter the place the elective abortion will happen.” Whereas the pregnant folks themselves don’t face authorized legal responsibility, individuals who assist them receive an abortion might face a civil lawsuit for doing so. Anti-abortion activists have dubbed these ordinances anti-“abortion trafficking” legal guidelines.
These ordinances have been drafted by ant-abortion extremist Mark Lee Dickson and former solicitor common of Texas Jonathan F. Mitchell, the architect of Texas’s “bounty hunter” abortion ban who just lately demanded affected person data from a number of Texas abortion funds. Lawyer Lisa Needham has written that “Mitchell is far more than the person who helped make it authorized for anti-choicers to moonlight as bounty hunters … If a tradition struggle is happening, Mitchell is within the thick of it, representing individuals who was relegated to the authorized fringes, however are actually engaged in a concerted effort to maneuver the legislation a lot additional to the fitting.”
Dickson has additionally spent the final yr lobbying for the passage of anti-abortion journey ordinances throughout the state. “Guys, I lengthy for the day [when], coast to coast, abortion is taken into account an amazing ethical, social and political incorrect and is outlawed in each single state,” Dickson advised the Lubbock fee.
On Tuesday, the Texas metropolis of Amarillo, in Potter and Randall counties, held an extended public listening to to think about an identical abortion journey ban that will apply to roads that result in New Mexico and Colorado, abortion protected haven states which have seen a big uptick in sufferers from Texas over the previous yr. The Amarillo metropolis council determined to not instantly vote on the ordinance. “These abortion trafficking ordinances actually are the subsequent stage in an abortion-free America,” stated Dickson, who additionally made an look on the listening to.
Authorized students have asserted that Dickson and Mitchell particularly crafted the ordinances to be enforced by personal residents—slightly than police, sheriffs or different county officers—as a technique to scale back the probability of a direct court docket problem, as such ordinances are seemingly unconstitutional.
Lubbock County Commissioner and County Choose Curtis Parrish appeared to help the sentiment of the ordinance, however was involved that the legislation might not survive judicial scrutiny whether it is challenged in court docket. “The difficulty isn’t whether or not we should always get up for the rights of the unborn or the security of the pregnant mom, however how can we make this ordinance stand as much as the scrutiny of state and federal appellate courts,” Parrish stated. In the long run, he abstained from voting on the measure.
Even far proper Supreme Courtroom Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in his concurring opinion in Dobbs, the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, wrote that, “Might a state bar a resident of that state from touring to a different state to acquire an abortion? In my opinion, the reply isn’t any based mostly on the constitutional proper to interstate journey.”
Even when these ordinances are extra like ceremonial declarations than legally binding legal guidelines, abortion journey bans will hurt Texans in Lubbock and surrounding communities who wish to entry an out-of-state abortion.
“Texans already dwell beneath a number of the most restrictive and harmful abortion bans within the nation but anti-abortion extremists proceed to push further pointless, complicated and fear-inducing limitations to important well being care,” stated Autumn Keiser, a spokesperson for Deliberate Parenthood of Better Texas.
This text is licensed beneath Inventive Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you’re free to share and republish beneath the phrases of the license.
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