Cheers, clapping and relief filled the City Council chamber in Amarillo earlier this week after the conservative city rejected a measure that would have made driving on city roads and highways while traveling to an out-of-state abortion illegal. The law was rejected 4-1, the Texas Tribune reports, but could now go before Panhandle voters in November.
The vote is a win for abortion rights advocates, largely because of Amarillo’s proximity to New Mexico. Last year alone, more than 14,000 Texans crossed into New Mexico to receive an abortion, The New York Times reports, and with other Panhandle and West Texas cities enacting travel bans similar to the one proposed in Amarillo, the stand against the ordinance is a significant one.
“We’re having people travel hundreds or thousands of miles for a procedure that typically takes less than 10 minutes and can be done in a doctor’s office setting,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, the founder of Whole Woman’s Health, told the Times. “Nobody does that for any other medical procedure.”
Our revolt against the stupid travel bans is winning. The two most recent cities to consider it have voted it down.
— Senator Nathan Johnson (@NathanForTexas) June 13, 2024
I will again be re-filing my bill to prohibit Texas cities and counties from enacting these unconstitutional, big-government, unthinkably invasive attacks on… pic.twitter.com/PdtpDS9rng
Some cities along the path between North Texas and New Mexico — Abilene, San Angelo, Odessa and Lubbock — have passed bans on using city roads for travel to an abortion procedure. But after hearing hours of public comment, Amarillo Mayor Cole Stanley said he did not feel the city has the legal right to join the other municipalities that have ruled in favor of travel bans.
State Sen. Nathan Johnson, who represents parts of Dallas County, posted on X that he was celebrating the “revolt” against “stupid travel bans.” Johnson said he intends to refile a measure prohibiting Texas cities from enacting travel bans for individuals seeking out-of-state abortion care.
“All is not lost,” Johnson told the Observer. “Here at last we see signs of restraint — both political and judicial. And maybe, just maybe, the right-wing mob has stretched its bungee cord to the max.”
An Amarillo Federal Court Is an Abortion Case Hot Zone
Abortion is not a new topic for Amarillo.
Since the repeal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, the conservative Texas city has been the site of several high-profile legal swings at abortion access, each filed in Amarillo because of the lone federal judge, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who presides over the cases. Appointed to the federal bench by former U.S. President Donald Trump, Kacsmaryk has shaped post-Roe abortion policy on the state and federal levels through his unapologetically conservative rulings, such as a decision against a federal program that provides teens with confidential access to birth control and a sweeping ruling that aimed to block access to the abortion pill mifepristone nationwide.
The latter case was unanimously overturned by the United States Supreme Court early Thursday morning, with the court finding the group of anti-abortion doctors who challenged the Food and Drug Administration’s guidance on access to the pill did not have legal standing to sue.
“A plaintiff's desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the opinion. “We recognize that many citizens, including the plaintiff doctors here, have sincere concerns about and objections to others using mifepristone and obtaining abortions. But citizens and doctors do not have standing to sue simply because others are allowed to engage in certain activities.”
Even broken clocks are right twice a day. But I don’t want us to lose sight of the fact that we should not have wait with bated breath for courts to decide our reproductive futures. This was always about politics, never science. Mifepristone is safe and abortion is health care. https://t.co/nasezrwVW9
— Jamila Perritt MD MPH (@Reprorightsdoc) June 13, 2024
Senate-hopeful Colin Allred said in a statement Thursday that Sen. Ted Cruz’s dedication to banning abortion in Texas had led to threats against legal medications like mifepristone.
“When and how to start a family should always be between a woman and her doctor,” Allred said. “Mifepristone has been safe and legal for decades, and Ted Cruz and his extreme policies are responsible for putting this health care into question.
But for every case that falls in favor of abortion-rights advocates, other attempts at limiting access prevail.
Last month, two University of Texas professors filed a complaint in the Amarillo federal court arguing they should not have to excuse student absences if the student missed class to travel to an abortion, unless that abortion was medically necessary. In addition to being an inflammatory filing, it raises a question that the state Supreme Court declined to answer last month: What constitutes medical necessity?
Twenty women and two doctors hoped that answer would come from the state court ruling in Zurawski v. Texas, a case that claimed the lack of guidance on when medically necessary abortions could be provided left medical professionals in a legal limbo, threatening the lives of mothers. But the court rejected the lawsuit and declined to provide women and medical providers with clarity.
"As a provider, I love my patients so much, and I still wake up every morning worried about them. I think about all the things I could potentially do to keep them safe, but there is no clarity in the laws," Austin Dennard, a Dallas resident who joined the suit as a patient and OB-GYN, said after the state’s ruling. "I landed back in Texas after my own abortion, put on a white coat and went into the office still bleeding from my procedure that I had the privilege to be able to receive ... and I thought 'I still don't know what to do to keep them safe.'"
