A North Texas city that was at the center of a major U.S. Supreme Court case over abortion rights this year is once again at the forefront of the abortion fight.
In November, residents of Amarillo, Texas, will vote on an ordinance that would declare Amarillo a “sanctuary city for the unborn” and ban people from helping patients travel through Amarillo to obtain abortions — which the ordinance calls “abortion trafficking.” It would also ban people from possessing or distributing abortion pills within Amarillo city limits.
In recent months, several Texas municipalities have passed similar ordinances. The Amarillo City Council debated for months whether to pass its own ordinance. ordinance for a ‘sanctuary city’, but in June the council officially rejected it.
But while the ordinance languished before the council, a separate group gathered enough signatures to put the ordinance on Amarillo’s November ballot. Although the City Council is still debating the language to Now that the ordinance is on the ballot, activists in the city are already preparing to campaign against it.
“We are ready,” said Lindsay London, an activist with the Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance. “Travel bans hurt communities. They hurt the privacy of medical relationships. They don’t help our communities be strong, safe, and supported.”
The volunteer-run Amarillo Reproductive Freedom Alliance plans to canvass, make phone calls and even put up billboards. “We’ve never done this before,” London said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
If the regulation is adopted, it will not be exposed people who want an abortion but rather anyone who “aids or abets an elective abortion when the abortion is performed on a resident of Amarillo,” regardless of where the abortion takes place. Texans can sue each other for alleged violations of the law, with damages of $10,000 for each violation. In 2021, Texas passed a similar law to undermine Roe v Wade’s protections and ban abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.
Texas law bans almost all abortions. But because Amarillo is one of the few major cities in the Texas Panhandle, travelers from Texas and other southern states can pass through it on their way to New Mexico, where abortion is still available.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe two years ago, Amarillo has become something of a ground zero for fights over abortion. In late 2022, a coalition of anti-abortion doctors and activists filed a lawsuit over abortion pills in a federal court in Amarillo. The lawsuit argued that the Food and Drug Administration overstepped its authority when it approved mifepristone, a commonly used abortion pill, for use in abortions in 2000.
By bringing the case in Amarillo, abortion opponents effectively ensured that the case would land on the desk of Matthew Kacsmaryk, a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump who has a history of opposing LGBTQ+ rights.
Last year, Kacsmaryk ruled in favor of suspending the FDA’s approval of mifepristone — a move that could have devastated abortion access across the country, including in states that protect abortion rights. The case ultimately became the first abortion case to reach the Supreme Court since Roe was overturned. Last month, the high court ruled in a 9-0 decision that the abortion opponents behind the case lacked the legal right to bring the case in the first place.
“Kacsmaryk’s placement in a federal court here has turned Amarillo into an unsuspecting breeding ground for reproductive rights and reproductive decisions that can have enormous consequences,” London said. “But when it comes to the everyday voter, many of them have no idea that this is even happening.”
Amarillo’s proposed “sanctuary city” ordinance repeatedly cites the federal Comstock Act, a 19th century anti-abortion law that bans the mailing of all abortion-related materials. Though the Biden administration has issued guidance stating that the Comstock Act — whose anti-abortion provisions could not be enforced under Roe — only applies to people who intend to violate the law, some anti-abortion activists believe the Comstock Act could be used to pass a nationwide abortion ban.
“We urge all U.S. attorneys in the state of Texas, both current and prospective, to investigate and prosecute abortion providers and abortion pill distribution networks,” the proposed regulation reads. Attorneys are urged to pursue providers using the Comstock Act and anti-racketeering laws.
By citing the Comstock Act in legislation and lawsuits across the country, anti-abortion activists hope to create opportunities for higher courts to intervene and rule that the 151-year-old Comstock Act is still valid law.
Project 2025, a playbook written by the conservative Heritage Foundation, suggests that a future Republican president use the Comstock Act to ban the shipment of all abortion pills. Some anti-abortion activists in Texas—such as Mark Lee Dickson, who pushed for Amarillo’s “sanctuary city” ordinance—have gone further, arguing that the Comstock Act would also ban the shipment of both pills and “any surgical equipment used for an elective abortion.”
Such an interpretation of the Comstock Act would ban virtually all abortions.