I’m a little concerned about this.
The city of San Antonio is facing a lawsuit after budgeting $500,000 to support reproductive health services, including, potentially, transportation and lodging for people seeking abortions outside Texas.
A group of anti-abortion organizations filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Bexar County, asking a state district judge to prohibit taxpayer dollars from going to organizations that help Texans travel out of the state for abortion.
Last month, City Council members approved a $3.7 billion budget, San Antonio’s largest, which included half a million dollars to establish a “reproductive justice fund.” The city has not yet said how that money will be spent; during City Council hearings, advocates talked mostly about using it to support health education, access to emergency contraception and testing for sexually transmitted diseases.
But some City Council members said they would like to see the money used to support nonprofit groups that help Texans travel to other states to get abortions.
“We need to discuss the opportunities we have to make an impact legally,” council member Jalen McKee-Rodriguez told television station KSAT in September. “As far as we can go, I want to go there, of course, within the confines of state law.”
The lawsuit claims that providing taxpayer dollars to these organizations violates the law, even if the funds aren’t used to directly pay for out-of-state abortions.
“Any such grant aids and abets their criminal activities by freeing up money and resources for their ‘procurement’ of drug-induced abortions,” the lawsuit said.
City Attorney Andy Segovia rejected the premise of the lawsuit, saying it was “based on misinformation and false allegations.”
“A decision has not been made on how that money will be used,” Segovia said in a statement. “The City Council will have an open work session to discuss the use of the funds that will be managed by the City’s Metro Health Department. The funds will be distributed in accordance with state and federal laws.”
I did not write about this when it happened, but you can read this San Antonio Report story for more details about that budget item. Let me start by saying fuck those forced-birth fascists and everything they stand for. It probably is the case that there’s no cause for action until the city determines how that money is to be spent – I believe the legal term is that the issue is not “ripe” yet. My concern is that once this gets into the system, who knows how it could end up. The state courts for the most part aren’t as crazy as the federal courts, so if somehow this makes it to SCOTx I don’t think we’re going to get some bonkers result, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t find some more subtle way to make things worse. I would just prefer to have less legal uncertainty in my life right now, is what I guess I’m saying. I’m not going to get that, of course. The San Antonio Report and the Current have more.