The founder of the Texas-based initiative that urges cities and counties to become “sanctuaries for the unborn” says that while the unborn are protected from abortion in Texas, “it doesn’t mean that the work is finished.”
Mark Lee Dickson, founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Initiative and a director with Right To Life of East Texas, told CatholicVote that one of his key focuses is on closing up two significant “loopholes”: abortion trafficking and the treatment of the bodies of aborted babies as “waste.”
“We started doing county ordinances as well,” he said:
And we’re working on a city ordinance in Amarillo. And in the ordinances in a post-Roe, Texas, we’re closing a lot of these loopholes that still exist in our state laws. You know, abortion is outlawed in Texas, but that doesn’t mean that the work is finished.
Midlothian, Texas – population 38,635 – became the 68th city to adopt an enforceable ordinance that protects babies from abortion within its limits on February 27. The City Council voted 5-2 to become a Sanctuary City for the Unborn.
Still, Dickson notes the challenge is in closing loopholes that persisted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“One of the disappointments in the Midlothian ordinance was that this was an ordinance that we started on quite some time ago. That ordinance they passed was one that we were passing prior to the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” Dickson explained. “And, so, it really didn’t address a number of the loopholes that we’ve recognized since then, and we’ve been working hard to close.”
“And, so, the loopholes we’re closing of course, are things like abortion trafficking, the taking of pregnant mothers across state lines for the purpose of abortion,” he continued:
And another loophole where attempting to close is the reality that there are waste management companies that are picking up from abortion facilities outside of Texas, and they’re bringing those contents back to Texas, for disposal, and there’s nothing in our laws to address this issue.
In 2017, Dickson said, Texas had passed a fetal burial law that specifically stated that fetal remains at a medical facility in the state must be disposed of properly through burial or cremation.
“And that, of course, is a massive loophole,” he highlighted:
And, so, what we’re seeing is these abortion facilities that are outside of the state of Texas are performing abortions on pregnant mothers from Texas. And, then, these waste management companies are going to, and picking up, at those facilities and returning it, since they’re not a medical facility.
He elaborated further on the issue, a topic of his recent article at Texas Scorecard:
There’s really no regulation that stops them from just throwing the unborn children’s bodies, mixed with the other medical wastes, into an autoclave and a shredder. And, so, what we’re seeing is waste companies like BioCycle and Oncore Technology – they’re going six hours to Kansas, picking up from there, and then they go into New Mexico, California, Arizona – all these places outside of Texas – and bring those remains back to the Lone Star State.
In Midlothian, Dickson was disappointed they could not close this loophole.
“You know, it’s one of those things where the ordinance they passed extended the private enforcement mechanism from the point of detectable heartbeat to the point of detection – which is still a good measure to make,” he said, “and that’s something we want in all of our pro-life laws and policies in Texas. But there was an opportunity to do so much more and we’re really encouraging cities to do as much as they possibly can.”
Ultimately, Dickson said his initiative is “paving the way for an abortion-free America.”
“And that means that we’ve got to be very mindful of what we’re doing,” he warned. “We’ve got to be knowledgeable of the laws that we currently have here in the state of Texas. And we can’t stop there. We’ve got to go further.”
The pro-life activist is hopeful the ordinance he is working on with Ellis County, Texas – one that covers the county’s unincorporated parts – will pass.
“That would be more along the lines of what we’re thinking, that we’ve seen Lubbock County pass and Odessa has passed a similar version,” he said:
We need to do as much as we possibly can to end this whole practice of abortion trafficking. And then along with that, we’ve got to address this reality that these waste management companies can pick up from abortion facilities without consequence.
To date, 51 cities in Texas, and 17 in other states – Nebraska, Ohio, Louisiana, Iowa, New Mexico, and Illinois – have become sanctuary cities for the unborn.
The Texas counties of Mitchell, Goliad, Cochran, Lubbock, and Dawson have all passed ordinances protecting the unborn from abortion and also banning abortion trafficking in the unincorporated parts of their counties.
Lea and Roosevelt Counties in New Mexico have also voted to adopt an ordinance requiring abortionists to comply with federal law in the unincorporated parts of their counties. In New Mexico, Dickson says, that ordinance outlaws abortion de facto due to its reliance on the Comstock Act, an 1873 federal statute that prohibits any person from “knowingly” using the mail system to send any “article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.”
