All-Male Waskom City Council Creates ‘sanctuary city for the unborn’

Waksom, Tx. didn’t have any abortion services available anyway, but at Tuesday’s city council meeting, the little town made it clear that women’s healthcare is not a priority in the city, to say the least.

The all-male Waksom city council voted for a measure, which declares abortion providers “criminal organizations” and declared itself the state’s first “sanctuary city for the unborn”. The resolution banned most abortion procedures in the city, just in case an abortion provider wanted to build a facility in the city of 2,000 people, KTAL-TV reported.

Waskom is just a short drive from Shreveport, Louisiana, and Moore said that he feared a Louisiana abortion clinic may want to move to Waskom after the law passed in the state banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected, the Longview (Texas) News-Journal reported.

“We decided to take things into our own hands and that we have got to do something to protect our cities and to protect the unborn children,” Mark Lee Dickson, director of East Texas Right to Life, said, according to KETK-TV.

Related Article: Alabama House Approves ‘Born Alive’ Abortion Bill

The Waskom measure calls Roe v. Wade and laws that permit abortion “unconstitutional usurpations of judicial power … and are null and void in the City of Waskom.”

The measure does exempt victims of rape and incest and women whose lives are at risk without an abortion.

The city council knows that it will likely face a lawsuit for the ordinance. But their hope is that the Supreme Court would use a legal challenge, any legal challenge, to the declaration to look at Roe v. Wade again.

However, it’s not clear whether the nation’s highest court will take on any case that could reverse the Roe decision. Abortion-rights groups have already filed challenges to recent laws in states such as Alabama and Ohio.

Waksom is another area in a long line that have created bans restricting women’s access to abortions and healthcare.

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