(The Center Square) – This year, 21 cities and eight counties passed “Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn” ordinances in Texas. This brings the totals to 74 cities and 14 counties in Texas that have passed them since 2019.
In general, the ordinances ban abortion, abortion trafficking, the mailing of abortion pills and disposing of aborted preborn babies’ remains in their jurisdictions.
The ordinances were passed after a movement was launched in deep east Texas by prolife activist Mark Lee Dickson, who founded the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn initiative.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and Texas’ abortion ban went into effect, the movement expanded to address concerns that girls and women were being trafficked through Texas cities and counties to have abortions in other states. This includes some against their will and those who’d been sexually abused, prolife activists have argued.
“Abortion Trafficking Ordinances make it unlawful for any person to knowingly transport an individual for the purpose of providing or obtaining an elective abortion, regardless of where the elective abortion will occur, making the roads and runways in the area off limits to abortion traffickers,” Dickson said.
One ordinance from Howard County, Texas, states, “abortion-traffickers are taking pregnant mothers across state lines to abortion facilities in New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and other abortion access states and then are sent back to Texas where communities are forced to deal with the aftermath in their homes, schools, churches, and hospitals.”
In 2023 and 2024, Illinois, North Carolina, Kansas and New Mexico reported the greatest number of abortions provided to out of state residents, including from Texas, according to a Guttmacher Institute analysis.
New Mexico initially saw its number of abortion facilities triple after the Supreme Court’s ruling, The Center Square reported. In New Mexico, abortion is legal for girls over age 13 without obtaining permission from their parents, the state health agency explains.
In 2023, Whole Women’s Health opened clinics in Albuquerque and Las Cruces, New Mexico, located roughly 10 miles from El Paso, Texas. The organization said it sought to open clinics in Clovis and Hobbs, New Mexico, but city commissioners in these cities unanimously passed ordinances making it prohibitive to do so.
Hobbs officials unanimously passed an ordinance in 2022 requiring abortion providers to comply with federal law, outlawing abortion de facto. In 2023, Clovis’ city commissioners unanimously adopted a similar resolution.
Whole Women’s Health previously sued to stop Texas’ abortion ban, lost and closed its clinics in Texas. It then began advertising to women in Texas to have abortions at its New Mexico clinics, offering financial aid and travel funds.
This year, the Texas legislature passed a bill to ban taxpayer money from being used to fund out of state travel to have an abortion and an appellate court in Texas also halted a taxpayer funded scheme, The Center Square reported.
The ordinances also prohibit abortion-inducing drugs from being mailed, transported or delivered to a resident in city or county jurisdictions where the ordinance was passed and prohibit disposing aborted remains in their jurisdictions.
One ordinance from Dickens County, Texas, reads, “Abortion-inducing drugs are being mailed into communities across Texas from unregulated abortion pill trafficking organizations outside of the State of Texas and that the taking of these drugs, which exist for the purpose of terminating the life of an unborn child, have also resulted in adverse events which have left some women seeking emergency medical care.”
This year, Texas legislature passed a bill, which is now law, banning chemical abortion pills from being mailed, delivered or trafficked in Texas, The Center Square reported.
In 2019, the city of Waskom, Texas, located just miles from the Louisiana border, was the first to pass an enforceable ordinance outlawing abortion within its city limits.
In 2022, Lea County, NM, was the first county to pass an abortion-ban ordinance in the country. It requires abortion providers to comply with federal law in unincorporated parts of the county. In 2023, Roosevelt County, NM, passed a similar ordinance; Mitchell County was the first in Texas to pass an ordinance banning abortion and abortion trafficking.
As of December 2025, 91 cities in seven states have passed Sanctuary for the Unborn City ordinances. The majority are in Texas, 74, followed by eight in Nebraska, four in New Mexico, two in Ohio (one rescinded) and one each in Iowa, Illinois and Louisiana. Fourteen counties in Texas and two in New Mexico have also passed ordinances.
