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.
Honestly, yes. The nominal reason we give states federal money for highways that there’s a benefit to other states from one state having highways passing through it. If you’re not going to non-selectively give use of your highways, you’re not universally benefiting your neighboring states, so you shouldn’t get the money.
Now, the actual reason we take tax money from people in one state, give it to the federal government, just to have the it dish the money back out to the states is so the federal government gets a bunch of leverage over the states. It’s not actually efficient to collect a bunch of money, which costs money, and then give most of it back, which also costs money. It’s about control.