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.
My first thought as well. There is NO way this doesn’t get struck down in a court case. If you can’t even ban guns on streets near schools (US v. Lopez) then you definitely can’t ban a person from driving on a road to get to a medical procedure in a different state.
Have you seen the other decisions made by SCOTUS?
They don’t give a shit about consistency or law or precedent. They are politicians put there to deliver specific outcomes.
They do care about precedent, usually too much in my opinion. There have been many cases in the last few years brought to SCOTUS seeking the overturning of the doctrine of Qualified Immunity, but SCOTUS has in all cases either not taken them up or not ruled on that issue. They basically keep saying, “we’ve already ruled on this, we won’t touch it unless Congress changes the law in some way.” Dobbs was like the one issue SCOTUS has actually overturned a previous opinion on in recent years.
It’s not a ban, per se, it “just” opens people up to civil liability. The reason they do it that way is to skirt the Constitution.