Declaring Lubbock a “sanctuary city” for the unborn, voters have approved a local ban on almost all abortions, and the Texas legislature is considering a process banning the bar as early as six weeks of pregnancy .
Lubbock, home to some 260,000 people, is the 25th such “sanctuary city” – one in Texas that has banned abortions in two but not the last two years.
Drucilla Tigner, a policy and advocacy strategist for ACLU-Texas, said most other cities that have gone through similar sanctuary city measures have a population of a few hundred or thousand, and often have no medical provider, let alone Facilitates abortion, as does Lubbock.
The Lubbock Ordinance prohibits abortion in all cases, except when a woman’s life is in danger. It also allows any private citizen of Texas and family member of any woman who has had an abortion to sue the provider or any person.
The county election office said on Monday that about 63% of the vote in the May 1 election supported Lubbock’s abortion measure. The turnout was 22.6%. The measure is expected to take effect once official matching is completed, which can take up to a month.
The American Civil Liberties Union said on Monday that it weighed legal measures, calling the Lubbock vote unconstitutional and harmful to women’s health. The ACLU sued other such “sanctuary cities” in Texas last year. That lawsuit was dropped after the ordinance was changed to remove words marking the two reproductive rights groups as criminal organizations.
Lubbock is a medical center for 1 million people in West Texas. The “ordinance” stated that the ordinance has a wide influence not only on the people of Lubbock, but on that entire region.
Planned Parenthood, which reopened a clinic in Lubbock last year, said in a written statement that it would “comply with legal restrictions as needed.”
The right to abortion to a woman through the first trimester of pregnancy was protected nationally following the Supreme Court’s 7–2 decision in Rume v. Wade in 1973.
Abortion fights at the local level have heated up since the Supreme Court won a 6-3 conservative majority under former President Donald Trump. If Roe v Wade is overturned, abortion will be governed by state and local law.
Jim Baxa, whose West Texas for Life was among the organizations that received the ordinance before voters, said his major goal is to get Texas to ban abortion at the state level.
Baixa said West Texas for Life got the idea of a “sanctuary city” after seeing similar measures in East Texas two years ago. After the Lubbock city council unanimously rejected the measure as a violation of state and federal law, West Texas for Life gathered enough petition signatures to force a vote.
In March, the Texas Senate approved five bills prohibiting abortions – which would ban abortions as soon as a fetus’s heartbeat is detected, as well as up to six weeks in some pregnancies. The measure is expected to be put in place by the end of this week at Texas House.
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