Texas City Becomes 59th in the State to Ban Abortions

Texas already protects babies from abortions with its strong abortion ban that has reduced elective abortions to 0 statewide.

But 59 cities have passed their own laws banning abortions – ensuring that abortion businesses can’t set up shop to kill babies and hurt women if the state law is ever reversed or watered down.

Hooks, a city of about 2,700 in Bowie County, passed its own law on Monday. The law also protects teen girls by making it illegal to transport them to a state where abortions are legal to kill their babies.

Another city in Texas has passed an ordinance outlawing abortions, abortion trafficking, and the transportation and disposal of abortion remains within its city limits.

It becomes the 59th “Sanctuary City for the Unborn” in the state, according to the initiative’s founder Mark Lee Dickson.

Local minister Roy Ford praised the city council’s decision, saying, “Human life is the ultimate of God’s creation so it is one of the things that glorifies Him. Thank God for the five men of the Hooks City Council. They unanimously voted … for Hooks to be a Sanctuary City for the Unborn.”

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The Bowie County Republican Party chair was also complimentary. “Texas is a pro-life state and the Republican Party, like Governor [Greg] Abbott and Senator [Bryan] Hughes [(R-Mineola)], believe that there is more work to be done to protect pregnant moms and their unborn children in Texas. I want to thank the city council for unanimously voting yes, and I hope to see every city in the county and the county itself follow in their footsteps,” Gary Singleton wrote.

Even though Texas has passed several pro-life protections in the last few years, Dickson told The Texan, “Abortion-inducing drugs are still being mailed into the State of Texas. Pregnant mothers and their unborn children are still be abortion-trafficked across state lines to abortion access states like Kansas, New Mexico, and Colorado. These are problems that still exist in a post-Roe Texas.”

Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is pushing to stop abortion drugs in the Texas special legislative session.

The latest Induced Termination of Pregnancy (ITOP) report from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC), released January 2, 2025, confirms that Texas’s pro-life laws are achieving their intended goal: protecting both women’s and unborn babies’ lives.

During the first 26 months since the Supreme Court’s landmark Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Texas doctors have reported performing 132 medically necessary abortions to save women’s lives or health through August 2024 — an average of five per month — with elective abortions dropping to zero.

No doctor has been prosecuted, sued, or sanctioned for any of those abortions. No woman has lost her life for lack of an exception in the law.

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“These numbers reaffirm that Texas’s pro-life laws are working as intended — safeguarding the lives of both women and unborn children,” stated Amy O’Donnell, Communications Director for Texas Alliance for Life. “Texas doctors can and are providing medically necessary abortions in rare and tragic cases when the mother’s life or health is at risk, as allowed under state law. Claims suggesting otherwise are baseless and spread unjustified fear among pregnant women.”

Texas continues to provide robust resources to support women and families. The state has allocated $165 million to the Alternatives to Abortion program and $400 million to Women’s Health Services in its current budget. Medicaid, which covers more than half of all births in Texas, includes 12 months of postpartum care for mothers, thanks to recent legislative action. Texas Alliance for Life remains steadfast in defending these pro-life laws and advocating for policies that protect women and their unborn children while supporting families across the state.

Texas pro-life laws explicitly allow doctors to perform abortions when a mother’s life or health is at risk from the pregnancy, as is evident in the text of the law and explained by the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Medical Board:

• Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision, Texas’ Human Life Protection Act (HB 1280) went into effect, protecting the lives of unborn children beginning at conception. That law has an exception for medically necessary abortions when, in the “reasonable medical judgment” of the physician, the pregnancy causes “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy that places the female at risk of death or poses a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function unless the abortion is performed or induced.”

Pn May 31, 2024, the Texas Supreme Court, in Texas v. Zurawski, determined that the exception in the Texas Human Life Protection Act is both constitutional and clear. Physicians may use “reasonable medical judgment” to determine whether a pregnancy requires a medically necessary abortion. In the unanimous decision, the Court wrote:

A physician who tells a patient, “Your life is threatened by a complication that has arisen during your pregnancy, and you may die, or there is a serious risk you will suffer substantial physical impairment unless an abortion is performed,” and in the same breath states “but the law won’t allow me to provide an abortion in these circumstances” is simply wrong in that legal assessment.

In June 2024, the Texas Medical Board, which licenses and regulates physicians, addressed the life-of-the-mother medical exception in rules to provide guidance for physicians. The rules explained that, under Texas law, the threat to the mother’s life or health does not have to be imminent, a point which Texas Alliance for Life advocated for in the rule-making process a stakeholder.

Texas law’s definition of abortion explicitly allows doctors to treat women for an ectopic pregnancy or a miscarriage (spontaneous abortion):

An act is not an abortion if the act is done with the intent to:

(A) save the life or preserve the health of an unborn child;
(B) remove a dead, unborn child whose death was caused by spontaneous abortion; or
(C) remove an ectopic pregnancy.

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