When Amarillo resident Courtney Brown came across a social media post last July that announced anti-abortion activists would be bringing their “sanctuary cities for the unborn” campaign before her hometown council, she immediately reached out to her friends to start crafting a battle plan.
At the time, Brown, a 34-year-old owner of a local coffee shop, wasn’t an abortion rights activist, but she still knew she had to act—for her community and for those traveling through it for abortion care. The ordinance, which Amarilloans are set to vote on this November after the council declined to pass it earlier this summer, would allow almost any person to file a civil lawsuit against people who “aid or abet” abortion and reap $10,000 in damages, similar to the state’s bounty hunter-style Senate Bill 8. The broad ordinance could apply to anyone who provides funding to someone who passes through the city to receive out-of-state abortion care or who drives an abortion-seeking patient to their appointment on the city’s roads.
The threat is particularly harmful in a state with one of the country’s strictest abortion bans, which has forced some 35,000 pregnant patients to travel to New Mexico, Colorado, and other states where the procedure remains legal.
