In recent months, abortion opponents in Texas have succeeded in passing a growing number of local ordinances to prevent people from helping women travel to have abortions in nearby states that still allow the procedure.
On Monday, Lubbock County, a conservative hub of more than 300,000 residents near the border with New Mexico, became the largest county yet to enact such a ban. The county commissioners court, during a public meeting that drew occasionally impassioned testimony, voted to make it illegal for anyone to transport a pregnant woman through the county, or pay for her travel, for the purpose of seeking an abortion.
The county, which includes the city of Lubbock and Texas Tech University, joined three other far smaller counties — one along the New Mexico border and two others in the middle of the state — in passing ordinances that were drafted in part by the architect of Texas’s six-week abortion ban, adopted in 2021 even before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned of Roe v. Wade last year.
The city of Amarillo, in the Texas Panhandle, on Tuesday held an hourslong public hearing to consider a similar ordinance, which would apply to a network of roads and highways that pass through the city of 200,000 and lead toward New Mexico and Colorado, states where many Texas women have traveled for procedures.
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