Texas Attorney General Sues San Antonio over Abortion Travel

On Friday, April 4, less than twenty-four hours after San Antonio’s city council voted to use city funds to pay for women to travel out of state to get abortions, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office filed a lawsuit against the city. The lawsuit is for unlawfully using public money to fund “abortion tourism,” enabling people to evade Texas’s laws protecting the lives of unborn children.

This city council action and the resulting lawsuit are another example of the liberal mayor and city council spending taxpayer money to fund an activity that goes against Texas state law. It will also result in the city spending thousands or millions of dollars to pay private attorneys to defend the city against the state.

This lawsuit is all because of the liberal mayor Ron Nirenberg and five leftist councilmembers – Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, Melissa Cabello Havrda, Dr. Sukh Kaur, Phyllis Viagran, and Terri Castillo – who wanted to pander to a small liberal, radical segment of people. San Antonio set aside $100,000 of city taxpayers’ money for a “Reproductive Justice Fund” specifically to pay for pregnant mothers to travel out-of-state to abort their unborn babies.

The proponents of this City funding say it is for the health of women, but the state law allows for women to have abortions because of health reasons. This is liberal/leftist political action.

However, under Texas state law, cities cannot use public money to assist in circumventing Texas’s pro-life protections. Attorney General Paxton’s Healthcare Program Enforcement Division has requested a temporary restraining order and injunctive relief to stop the unlawful funding from going into effect.

Attorney General Paxton says San Antonio has blatantly defied Texas law by using taxpayer dollars to fund abortion tourism. Beyond being a politically motivated misuse of public funds, it is an attack on the pro-life values of our state. A.G. Paxton says he will not stand by while “rogue cities” use tax dollars to circumvent state law and take the innocent lives of unborn children.

This is not the first time the City of San Antonio tried to ignore or circumvent a state law and lost and settled. In December 2017, instead of contacting immigration law enforcement immediately as per state law, San Antonio police were told to release a dozen suspected undocumented immigrants from an abandoned tractor trailer that was found on the East Side.

The San Antonio City Council publicly approved a $300,000 settlement, but many insiders at City Hall said millions of taxpayer dollars were spent on legal consulting with outside lawyers. These liberal political tantrums should be avoided because they cost city taxpayers money.

If a group wants to provide abortion travel to women, why not let a privately funded group pay for this abortion travel? And why do the liberal/leftist city leaders challenge the state at the expense of the city taxpayers?

The city government should only fund projects and services that benefit everyone, such as public safety, streets, and water/sewer. It should not fund programs and projects that benefit some but are not legal under state law.

Taxpayers need to speak up at voting polls against liberals and leftists who misspend their money.