The Amarillo City Council approved ballot language for a “Sanctuary City for the Unborn” proposition, which will go before residents on November 5.
The ordinance prohibits, from conception, both surgical and chemical abortions within the city limits; transporting an individual through Amarillo for the purpose of an elective abortion; and aiding and abetting the procurement of an abortion for an Amarillo resident, including with money or resources for the transportation.
Council Member Don Tipps asked that the proposition, originally on the consent agenda, be moved off to allow further discussion.
Jace Yarbrough, the former candidate for Senate District 30 and an attorney who came to speak at the city council meeting on behalf of the Sanctuary City for the Unborn ordinance initiating committee, asked that the proposition language be amended.
As proposed, the ballot proposition said the ordinance would be “establishing a criminal offense for any person to manufacture, possess, or distribute abortion-inducing drugs in the city of Amarillo.”
However, Yarbrough argued that the ordinance does not establish a criminal offense which would be enforced by the government, but utilizes a private cause of action similar to that found in the Texas Heartbeat Act.
The city council changed the language from “establishing a criminal offense” to “it shall be unlawful,” as suggested by the Amarillo city attorney. The ballot language as amended passed by a vote of 4 to 1, with Council Member Josh Craft voting against it.
Craft said he wanted more time to get a few questions about the language answered by outside counsel. If delayed, the last date to approve the ballot language would have been August 19 and would have required a specially-called city council meeting.
Yarbrough said that the council’s adjustment to the ballot language made it more accurate as to the enforcement mechanisms.
"The only part of the ballot language that was of concern was the criminal offense language,” Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Initiative founder Mark Lee Dickson said. “We just wanted the ballot language to be accurate.”
Dickson pointed out that about 60 political subdivisions in Texas have passed similar ordinances over the last five years.
Some cities like Lubbock , San Angelo, and Abilene have put Sanctuary City for the Unborn measures on their ballots using similar language and had no issue, Dickson said.
"That was the only change that we were requesting; we just wanted the ballot language to be accurate," he said. "About 60 political subdivisions across the state of Texas, over the last five years, have put these ordinances on their city agendas, and the largest of those cities have actually put it on the ballots and they did not have a problem with that process. The descriptions were pretty much the same as here in Amarillo. It is a longer description than those other cities. While I would prefer it to be shorter, I do not mind the fact that it says more. All the information there is accurate. And if the voter is more informed, then that is only going to help us, not hurt us."
Dickson said that now that the ordinance is set to be on the ballot with appropriate wording that he will work to inform other communities about the need to pass these ordinances to address abortion travel, which his group sees as trafficking the unborn and medication abortion loopholes he sees the Texas abortion laws as not addressing.
"I really applaud the leadership of Mayor Stanley and Councilmember Scherlen, who I have had the most interaction with as far as pushing back on the ordinance,” he said. “I feel like they really did a good job in resolving this today, saving us from coming out another day.”
Mayor Cole Stanley emphasized that the city council was not trying to lead voters in any direction with the ballot language. “It is our role to summarize accurately and succinctly in one paragraph an 18-page ordinance,” the mayor told the audience.
Co-founder of the Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance, Lindsay London, expressed her group’s dissatisfaction with the decision on ballot language for the anti-abortion ordinance.
“We still don't believe that the ballot language is clear enough to understand the 18-page ordinance,” London said. “It is not about abortion, and the declarations that are put into the ballot language do not explain to citizens how there is going to be $10,000 bounties put on each other and how you do not have to have standing to bring lawsuits against each other. How is this not a violation of our constitutional rights, right to interstate travel, and all the extraterritorial jurisdiction that it encompasses?”
London does not feel the ballot language gives clear understanding to voters of what they are voting on.
“The change they made in wording from criminal to unlawful is not clear enough for the voter to understand,” she said. “It is clearly making this a criminal act that is not doing right by the citizens who are just traveling with people to get a legal abortion in another state.”
London also took issue with the term abortion trafficking, which is still in the ballot language.
"It is a garbage term so they can go after people's rights to Interstate travel," London said. "It is a term made up of Mark Lee Dickson and the people surrounding him. There is no such thing as abortion trafficking; it should be taken out of the language. How do you even explain that to people going out of state just to seek health care? They are criminalizing people seeking healthcare out of state and calling it abortion trafficking, and that is dangerous. What it is going to do is strip citizens of their right to free travel and other rights.”
On Tuesday, June 11, the Amarillo City Council voted 4 to 1 to reject the citizen-initiated “Sanctuary City for the Unborn” ordinance, both in its amended and original forms. Council Member Don Tipps was the only member to vote against rejecting the ordinance.
Ballot language can be challenged if it leaves out material facts, the Amarillo city attorney noted.
In January, grassroots groups prevailed in challenging constitutional amendment ballot language from the November 2021 election. The proposition did not include language about the use of increased ad valorem taxes to pay bonds or notes issued by the county in the transportation reinvestment zone district, a fact the 7th Court of Appeals in Amarillo said should have been indicated.
