Lubbock County, Texas, joins a group of other rural Texas counties that have voted to ban women from using their roads to seek abortions.
This comes after six cities and counties in Texas have passed abortion-related bans, out of nine that have considered them. However, this ordinance makes Lubbock the biggest jurisdiction yet to pass restrictions on abortion-related transportation.
During Monday’s meeting, the Lubbock County Commissioners Court passed an ordinance banning abortion, abortion-inducing drugs and travel for abortion in the unincorporated areas of Lubbock County, declaring Lubbock County a “Sanctuary County for the Unborn.”
The ordinance is part of a continued strategy by conservative activists to further restrict abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade as the ordinances are meant to bolster Texas’ existing abortion ban, which allows private citizens to sue anyone who provides or “aids or abets” an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.
The ordinance, which was introduced to the court last Wednesday, was passed by a vote of 3-0 with commissioners Terence Kovar, Jason Corley and Jordan Rackler, all Republicans, voting to pass the legislation while County Judge Curtis Parrish, Republican, and Commissioner Gilbert Flores, Democrat, abstained from the vote.
I actually don’t think Dobbs affected this that much. Texas was trying to circumvent Roe before Dobbs, anyway, not using criminal prosecution but by allowing people to be sued in civil court for abortion.
Sure, and they found lots of subtle ways to make abortions inconvenient and in some cases unavailable. But now that they can make them outright illegal, they’re passing laws to criminalize everyone and everything involved.
The ordinance in this Texas case doesn’t make anything criminal, it uses the same civil liability workaround that Texas was using at the state level before Dobbs.