A lawyer and a Texas Christian pastor have taken it upon themselves to fight abortion one city at a time following the U.S. Supreme Court's controversial overturning of the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
Fighting Abortion One City at a Time
Based on the report by Yahoo Finance, Texas pastor Mark Lee Dickson teamed up with lawyer Jonathan Mitchell to go one city after another to establish "sanctuary cities for the unborn."
The news outlet said that Dickson is the founder of Right to Life of East Texas, while Mitchell is the brains behind the state's 2021 "heartbeat" abortion law.
Their project partly stemmed from pleas from pastors in Hobbs and Clovis, New Mexico, for their help addressing the influx of Texas women seeking abortion in Albuquerque and other cities where abortion is yet to be banned. The pastors said they fear that their conservative towns are being used as a staging areas for those women due to their proximity to cities with abortion clinics.
"We know that abortion providers want to set up right here in these cities that are just minutes away from the Texas border. They want to attract as many Texas residents as possible for abortions right here in New Mexico," Yahoo Finance quoted Dickson saying.
The Christian pastor made the statement following the Hobbs city commission hearing on Oct. 17 relevant to anti-abortion ordinances.
Meanwhile, Clovis Mayor Mike Morris said on Oct. 13 that they hope Texas legislators get the message about their willingness to make their cities abortion-free.
"We hope this sends the message to our state legislature that there are pro-life cities out there and we want to self-determine on this issue," Morris said.
'New Frontier' of the Anti-Abortion Fight
Both Hobbs and Clovis are reportedly making legal efforts to ensure that abortion clinics do not set up shops in their cities. Such legal moves instantly caused abortion providers to second-think about their plans to open up their business in the two cities.
Activists like Dickson and Mitchell hope that other towns and cities will follow the examples of Hobbs and Clovis. They mainly target the so-called "blue states" held by Democrats, who support women's access to abortion clinics.
While activists expect legal hurdles against anti-abortion legislation, they remain optimistic since similar legal efforts were successfully passed in Texas, like the one in Lubbock. The city reportedly outlawed abortion in 2021, a year before the June 24, 2022, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In response, a CEO of a large independent abortion services provider said that those fighting the existence of abortion clinics are slowly shifting their efforts in cities she called 'new frontier.'
"Anti-abortion forces, now that they don't need to pay attention to Texas and Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana anymore, they're starting to focus on what I call the 'new frontier'," Whole Woman's Health CEO Amy Hagstrom Miller explained.
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