Anti-abortion activist Mark Lee Dickson was key in lobbying for Cochran County's travel ban.Last week, the board of commissioners in Cochran County, a county of 2,500 people that borders New Mexico, adopted an ordinance banning people from traveling on its local roads to get an abortion, the Texas Tribune reports.
Cochran's ordinance only applies to people driving someone seeking an abortion. Like the controversial six-week abortion ban approved in 2021 by the Texas Legislature, it doesn't apply to the abortion seeker, and it would be enforced through private civil suits, the Tribune reports. If it sounds like these measures are legally indefensible, count yourself on the side of law scholars and abortion-rights groups, who say they're blatantly unconstitutional.
"This is an effort, one by one by one, to create a statewide ban against travel to other states, literally creating a reproductive prison in the state of Texas," Wendy Davis, a former state senator who's now a senior adviser at Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, told the Tribune.