The Amarillo City Council Tuesday approved the resolution to order a special election that will encompass an abortion ordinance declaring Amarillo a “Sanctuary City for the Unborn” and include four propositions to amend the city charter.
With the abortion ordinance at issue with the council since last year, councilmembers agreed to discuss the length of ballot language of the 18-page ordinance, which had previously been soundly rejected by a 4-1 vote margin in June, with councilmember Don Tipps being the only dissenting voice. After a brief discussion Tuesday, the council agreed by a 4-1 vote to change the wording of criminal to unlawful. Councilmember Josh Craft voted against the measure as he wanted to take more time to ensure that the ballot language was clear to voters.
Mark Lee Dickson, director of Right to Life East Texas, who has been the face of the abortion ordinance in Amarillo and other municipalities across the nation, spoke about the changing of the wording on the ballot initiative.
"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.”
When asked about the position of his organization that abortion is murder while pushing an ordinance that imposes civil suit as a remedy to stop abortions, Dickson stated that there are no state or local laws that penalize the mother in these cases, just those that assist in travel or procedure.
“That is not where we are at as a culture, but I think there is value in having that discussion of what role everyone plays in abortion,” he said. “I have been outside of many abortion facilities, and it is a big fat lie that abortion does not affect fathers. It does and they live with that for the rest of their life. I think there needs to be some honest discussion about what abortion is. We all know that when we see an ultrasound and hear that heartbeat, it is human life. And it is time we started treating those lives just like any other life in this culture ... The mother who drowns her 2-month-old in the bathtub is held accountable for that. There is a role mothers play in their abortion, and we as a culture need to be having that discussion of accountability.”
Dickson stressed that at this point, he is not pushing any legislation to punish the mother but is willing to discuss the subject, comparing the institution of slavery morally to abortion.
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.”
She 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.”
London emphasized that her group would work diligently to properly educate the public on the overreach of the abortion ordinance.
"This is about our constitutional rights and bodily autonomy,” she said. “This is about the government not being allowed to interfere with your medical decisions. And it is also about extremists who don't agree with you or have the same Christian belief as you not being allowed or being allowed to dictate your health choices."
Amarillo Mayor Cole Stanley spoke about the decision to amend the language of the ballot measure.
“The council took the approach of, hey, let’s change that on the proposed ballot language to change that one word from criminal to unlawful, and let’s avoid any kind of scrutiny that could cause us a legal issue in the future,” he said. “We have already voted against the ordinance as a whole ... it is now up to the citizens in November.”
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Amarillo City Council moves foward on special election ballot items
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