A seventh Texas town voted to become a sanctuary for unborn babies Monday.
The town of Westbrook in West Texas voted unanimously on the pro-life ordinance, banning abortions and abortion facilities in their city and declaring it to be a place where unborn babies are protected and valued.
Earlier this year, Waskom, Naples, Joaquin, Tenaha and Gilmer also approved sanctuary city ordinances to protect unborn babies. Omaha was the sixth city, but it recently retracted the ordinance and passed a non-enforceable resolution instead, The Texan reports.
Leading the sanctuary city effort is Mark Lee Dickson, director of Right to Life of East Texas.
“The City of Westbrook is the first city in West Texas to pass an ordinance and many more cities are expected to follow in the coming weeks. Praise Jesus!” Dickson wrote on Facebook after the vote.
More cities are expected to follow. The biggest may be Big Spring (population 27,000), which is slated to consider a pro-life ordinance on Dec. 10.
“As a longtime believer in the right to life for the unborn, I look forward to bringing the anti-abortion ordinance to the council at our next meeting,” Mayor Shannon Thomason recently told the Big Spring Herald.
But abortion activists already are planning ways to fight back and keep the killing of unborn babies legal and widely available.
Drucilla Tigner, a political strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, recently hosted a webinar to urge abortion activists to challenge the sanctuary city ordinances, according to The Texan.
“It’s a problem. It’s a growing epidemic. It’s something that we think is not just going to stop in East Texas. We expect it to move to other parts of the state,” Tigner said.
That so-called “epidemic” is protecting babies in the womb – unique, living human beings who deserve a right to life.
Some lawyers have warned cities about passing the ordinances because of a potential legal challenge. The U.S. Supreme Court took away the power of state and local governments to protect unborn babies from abortion through Roe v. Wade.
But Dickson told LifeNews that the ordinances take this into account.
He said the ordinances have “a public enforcement mechanism and a private enforcement mechanism. The public enforcement mechanism is about future enforcement.”
He said the public enforcement part of the ordinance fines abortionists $2,000 per abortion, but the penalty only would be enforced when Roe v. Wade is overturned.
“In other words, if you break the law today, you could be penalized for that crime years from now,” Dickson said. “The private enforcement mechanism does not have to wait upon the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and is in effect immediately. This part of the ordinance is about private lawsuits. When a child is killed by abortion, the family of that child … can sue the abortionist, the one who paid for the abortion, the one who drove the mother to the abortion, etc.”
A growing number of towns and cities have passed ordinances and resolutions this year to protect the unborn. An ordinance is a municipal government law or regulation. A resolution is a statement of support or opposition, but it is not legally enforceable.
Many of these pro-life measures came in response to abortion activists’ increasingly radical pro-abortion agenda. All of the top Democratic presidential candidates want to force taxpayers to fund abortions and oppose minor, common sense restrictions on abortions after viability. Many of them also voted against a bill to protect newborns from infanticide.
New York, Illinois, Vermont and Rhode Island also passed pro-abortion laws this year to allow viable, late-term unborn babies to be aborted for basically any reason up to birth.
In March, Roswell, New Mexico city leaders passed a pro-life resolution after state lawmakers considered a radical pro-abortion bill to expand late-term abortions. The bill narrowly failed to pass.
In New York state, Batavia city leaders and Putnam County legislators also passed resolutions condemning a radical new pro-abortion law in their state and supporting protections for the unborn.
In May, the Riverton City Council in Utah passed a similar resolution, declaring the city a “sanctuary for the unborn.” In June, the Utah County Commission unanimously voted in favor of a resolution supporting protections for unborn babies. The council in Highland, Utah and the city of Springdale, Arkansas also approved pro-life resolutions this summer.
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